Bruno Part 6

We waited a little while; then Julius said:

"He will probably be here by the time we are ready to put out the lamp; so let's to bed."

I felt troubled. It reminded me of the old days in Bruno's giddy youth when he was off sheep-chasing. As I brushed out my hair, I was turning over in my mind all those vague fears I had felt when I had formerly dreamed of Florida as a country full of unknown dangers. At last I spoke,--

"Julius, do you think a big alligator could have caught Bruno?"

"I don't know," answered Julius, slowly.

Then I knew that he was worried too.

When the lamp was out, Julius went to the door again and stood for some minutes whistling, calling, and listening; but no sound came except the pine murmurs and the mournful notes of a distant "Whip-Will's-Widow."

It was impossible for us to sleep. Having always had Bruno at our bedside, we had never before felt uneasy, and had provided no way to lock our shanty. There was just an old-fas.h.i.+oned string-latch with a padlock outside; and here we were, deserted by our protector!

Again and again through the night Julius got up to call and listen.

Towards dawn we both slept heavily, worn out with anxious surmises. We were awakened by a well-known whining and scratching at the door, and when we both sprang up to open it, in walked Bruno, looking just as he usually did in the morning,--lively, glad to see us awake, and ready for his breakfast.

We gave him a welcome so warm it surprised and delighted him, while we vainly questioned him for an explanation of his desertion of us for the night. It was of no use. We could see that he had not been running, but where _had_ he been? We gave it up.

Julius said his troubled night had left him without much appet.i.te for work; but the man who was helping him would be there, so he thought it best to go over to the building, anyway.

He surprised me by returning almost immediately. His face was lighted up and his eyes were dancing.

"I came back to tell you where Bruno slept last night," he exclaimed.

"You can't guess!"

"No," I answered; "I have already given it up."

"He went back to watch those tools I left over at the building. He dug himself a nest right beside them, drawing the edge of my old coat around for his pillow. The prints are all there as plain as can be!"

We were amazed and delighted at this performance; the reasoning seemed so human. He had watched Julius arranging and leaving the tools, the while making up his own mind that it was an unwise thing to do, and evidently deciding to see to it later. His sitting with us till bedtime, keeping in mind his mental appointment, and then going forth without a word from any one to keep it, seemed to us to be a truly wonderful thing, and so it seems to me yet.

From the first, we had made a constant companion of Bruno, talking to him always as if he could speak our language; and we have since thought that this must have been a sort of education for him, drawing out and developing his own natural gifts of thought and reason. He often surprised us by joining in the conversation. He would be lying dozing, and we talking in our usual tones. If we mentioned Robbie or Charlie, the two children who were his friends in his puppy days before he was our dog, or spoke of Leo, or of going somewhere, he would spring up all alert, running to the door or window, and then to us, whining and giving short barks of inquiry or impatience.

Always, after that first time we had tried to give him away, he was subject to terrible nightmares. In his sleep he would whimper and sigh in a manner strangely like human sobbing. We thought at such times that he was going through those trying days again, in his dreams. So we always wakened him, petting and soothing him till he fully realized that it was only a dream.

He had other ways which we thought noteworthy. Although he loved Julius better than he did me, yet he always came to me with his requests. If hungry or thirsty, he would come to me wagging his tail and licking his lips.

Like "Polly," his general term for food was cracker. If I asked, "Boonie want a cracker?" and if it was hunger, he would yawn in a pleased, self-conscious manner, and run towards the place where he knew the food was kept. If I had misunderstood his request, he continued gazing at me, licking his lips and wagging his tail till I asked, "Boonie want a drink?" Then he would yawn and run towards his water-cup, which I would find to be empty.

Often, when he had made his wants known to me, I pa.s.sed them on to Julius, who would wait on him; but it made no difference: the next time he came to me just the same. He seemed to have reasoned it out that I was the loaf-giver, as the old Saxons had it, or else he felt that I was quicker to enter into his feelings and understand his wishes.

CHAPTER XI

Not long after Bruno's self-imposed night watch we found ourselves settled on our own estate, ready to carry out our plans for the future.

Briefly they were as follows. We had intended to make an orange-grove, and while it was coming to maturity, we expected to raise early vegetables to s.h.i.+p to northern markets. We brought with us only money enough to make our place and live for a year: by that time we had fully expected to have returns from vegetable s.h.i.+pments which would tide us over till another crop. We had plenty of faith and courage, and were troubled by no doubts as to the feasibility of our plans. Nor need we have been, if only our land had contained the proper elements for vegetable growing. It was good enough orange land, but it would be a long time before we could depend on oranges for an income.

All this time we had been learning many things, taking care, as we began to understand the situation, to go to practical doers for advice instead of to visionary talkers.

There began to be serious consultations in our little home circle. The year was drawing to a close, and our whole crop of vegetables would not have filled a two-quart measure. We had gone on with our planting, even after we felt it to be hopeless, because we did not dare to stop and listen to our fears. It is not strange that we felt depressed and disappointed. We could see that our plans could easily have been carried out, had we only known just what sort of land to select. The whole State was before us to choose from, but we had been misled through the romances of a dreamer of dreams. All we had to show for our money, time, and labor was a small house surrounded by trees so young that they were at least five years from yielding us an income, and there was no more money for experiments.

For a while we felt rather bitter towards our misleading adviser, but I know now that we were wrong to feel so. A man can give only what he has.

"Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." A dreamer of dreams has only visions to offer to his followers, surely landing them either in the briers of difficulty or the mires of discouragement.

One day Julius returned from the nearest large town, where he had been for supplies, with an unusually thoughtful countenance. As soon as his purchases were unloaded and the horse had been attended to, he came in and, drawing a chair beside my work-table, opened the conversation with these memorable words:

"Judith, how would you like to go up to Lemonville to live?"

"What makes you ask?" questioned I. "It depends altogether on the circ.u.mstances how I'd like to live there."

"Well, Hawkes bantered me to-day to come up and keep his books for him, and I have been considering it all the way home. It looks like a way out, and I'll declare I don't see any other!"

"Go back to office work!" I exclaimed; "I thought you were done with that sort of thing!"

"I thought so, too; but after a year of this sort of thing, it begins to look quite different."

We sat up late, discussing this plan in all its bearings. Bruno seemed to know that it was a crisis in our affairs, and sat on end facing us, wrinkling his brows and looking from one to the other as each spoke. We finally decided that Julius was to go back to town in a day or two, and investigate further.

When Julius returned from Lemonville three days later, he brought us the news that he had promised to give the position a trial, and that he had engaged temporary quarters for us in a new house near the office.

Moreover, we were to move up there the following week, as Mr. Hawkes was impatient for his help.

While we felt relieved at this decision, there was still something very sad about the breaking up. We had builded so many hopes into our pine-woods home, which had seemed to us to be guarded by a "standing army" of giants carrying silver banners, especially imposing on moonlight nights when the wind kept the banners of moss swaying under the immense pine-trees.

We had seen it in imagination blossoming as the rose, a quiet little nest, far from the madding crowd. And now to abandon it at the beginning and go back to village life,--it was leaving poetry for the flattest of prose.

The first step towards breaking up was to dispose of our fowls. This was soon arranged, and when the cart came to carry them off, Bruno watched the loading of them with the keenest interest, turning his head sideways, with alert ears, and catching his lip between his side-teeth when a hen squawked, as was his way when nervous. At last they were all in the coop. The driver mounted to his seat, and started off. Bruno trotted along after him, evidently not understanding that they were no longer our chickens. He thought it was the beginning of the move he had heard us discuss. He followed along for perhaps a quarter of a mile. All at once he stopped and looked back; he saw us standing and looking after him. It was a dilemma. He looked after the receding wagon, then back at us, then at the wagon again. Then he turned and galloped back, stomach to earth, and bounded up to us, yelping and panting, while we explained that they were not our chickens any more; they were sold, and had gone away to live in another home.

The poultry disposed of, we began hurriedly to make ready for our own departure. It took a whole long day to pack our books, but we soon stowed our other things, and inside of the agreed time we were transferred and settled in the three rooms Julius had engaged.

There was a sitting-room below, which we used also as a dining-room, with a small kitchen behind it. Over the sitting-room we had a large chamber. The front windows of this room gave on the sloping roof which covered a lower porch. This seemed to meet Bruno's views; he at once sprang through one of the windows, and took possession of it as a lounging-place--airy and cool.

Again and again friends we had made in our sylvan retreat, who came up to town to visit us, said,--

"I found where you lived by seeing your dog on the porch-roof."

The house stood on rising ground and could be seen from almost any part of the village; so we found Bruno quite useful as a door-plate in a town where there were as yet no street names nor numbers.

We do not like living in the homes of other people, so as soon as possible we made arrangements for two town lots, and put up a little cottage.