“Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older--and we are older now.”
“We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember once you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you cried when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how your mother said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and sent it away, and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said that p'r'aps we'll have one one day?--and now we've got one.”
He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral tones:
The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go?... They could hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot go?
“Oh, Nurse, would you really?” whispered Mary. This innocent remark of Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than was, perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of colour rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have said is uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile.
“Excuse me one moment,” he said; “I hear you have a dog.”
The Jampot rose, as good manners demanded, but said nothing.
The new addition to the Cole family had finished his washing; the blazing fire had almost dried him, and his hair stuck out now from his body in little stiff prickles, hedgehog fashion, giving him a truly original appearance. His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador, and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed his dignity.
“There he is,” said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of delight, at the Jampot. “Isn't he lovely?”
“Lovely. My word!” Uncle Samuel's smile broadened. “He's about the most hideous mongrel it's ever been my lot to set eyes on. But he has his points. He despises you all, I'm glad to see.”
Jeremy, as usual with Uncle Samuel, was uncertain as to his sincerity.