Brooke was almost startled into calling out aloud, but the figure clapped his hand to her mouth, and her voice dropped to a whispered “Oh, Cub, Cub, where did you come from? How did you hear?”
“Why, from school, to be sure, Sis, and I heard from Mummy, else I hadn’t dared, or couldn’t have come,—she sent me a ten,—for I spent all that was left of my quarterly on Pam; she was worth it, even if I’d have had to walk. I’ve only had her a month, but she knows my whistle out of twenty, and she just loves me; yes, she does, you ought to see her look at me with her head on one side. I’ve just left her below with the engineer till I saw if the coast was clear. I’ll bring her up to you, unless you think father’s likely to come in. Then I suppose I’ll have to take her to the stable for keeps.”
While the boy rattled on, Brooke was recalling the fact of her brother’s letter, and that her mother had told her about sending for him to come home in spite of everything. He had come, then, in response to that and knew nothing of what had happened.
“Father will not come in,” she said, going to him and speaking very quietly to gain time, also because she did not know exactly how best to break the matter to this sixteen-year-old brother of hers, who, partly through perversity, but chiefly because his father had never understood his temperament or considered him as an individual, was the sort of cross between a mule and a firebrand dubbed “an impossibility” by people in general.
“She! She’s the finest year-old brindled pup you ever rolled your eyes on, only a quarter English for bone and grit, and the rest Boston for looks. Her father’s got eight firsts, and Bill Bent’s father owns the mother, and she’s reckoned the finest bitch shown this year. I paid fifty, but if Bill hadn’t been my chum, two hundred was the price! I called her Pam, after Mummy, you know, and I thought maybe she’d keep her for her own if father sends me off again to where they won’t have Pam. Lots of women have Boston bulls to ride out with them every day,” while, at the likelihood of catastrophe in connection with his pet, the animation that had lighted the boy’s face and shown the improving possibility of latent manhood died out, a weary look replacing it, and the Cub dropped into a lounging chair and began to cough, holding his hand to his side.