And then a blow fell.  It came from an elderly but ever undignified woman of her own race, who paused, across the street, and stood teetering from side to side in joyful agitation, as she watched the approach of Mrs. Silver with her woolly little companion beside her.  When this smaller silhouette in ink suddenly walked upright, the observer’s mouth fell open, and there was reason to hope that it might remain so, in silence, especially as several other pedestrians had stopped to watch the poodle’s uncalled-for exhibition.  But all at once the elderly rowdy saw fit to become uproarious.

“Hoopsee!” she shouted.  “Oooh, Gran’ma!”

* * * * *

And so, when the poodle “sat up,” unbid, to pray, while Kitty Silver rested upon the back steps, on her return from the excursion, she fiercely informed him that she had never lost a grandchild and that she would not adopt a stranger in place of one; her implication being that he, a stranger, had been suggested for the position and considered himself eligible for it.

He continued to pray, not relaxing a hair.

“Listen to me, dog,” said Kitty Silver.  “Is you a dog, or isn’t you a dog?  Whut is you, anyway?”

But immediately she withdrew the question.  “I ain’t astin’ you!” she exclaimed superstitiously.  “If you isn’t no dog, don’t you take an’ tell me whut you is:  you take an’ keep it to you’se’f, ‘cause I don’ want to listen to it!”

For the garnet eyes beneath the great black chrysanthemum indeed seemed to hint that their owner was about to use human language in a human voice.  Instead, however, he appeared to be content with his little exhibition, allowed his forepaws to return to the ground, and looked at her with his head wistfully tilted to one side.  This reassured her and even somewhat won her.  There stirred within her that curious sense of relationship evoked from the first by his suggestive appearance; fondness was being born, and an admiration that was in a way a form of Narcissism.  She addressed him in a mollified voice: 

“Whut you want now?  Don’ tell me you’ hungry, ’cause you awready done et two dog biskit an’ big saucer milk.  Whut you stick you’ ole black face crossways at me fer, honey?”

But just then the dog rose to look pointedly toward the corner of the house.  “Somebody’s coming,” he meant.

“Who you spectin’, li’l dog?” Mrs. Silver inquired.

Florence and Herbert came round the house, Herbert trifling with a tennis ball and carrying a racket under his arm.  Florence was peeling an orange.

“For Heavenses’ sakes!” Florence cried.  “Kitty Silver, where on earth’d this dog come from?”

“B’long you’ Aunt Julia.”

“When’d she get him?”

“Dess to-day.”

“Who gave him to her?”

“She ain’t sayin’.”

“You mean she won’t tell?”

“She ain’t sayin’,” Kitty Silver repeated.  “I ast her.  I say, I say:  ‘Miss Julia, ma’am,’ I say, ‘Miss Julia, ma’am, who ever sen’ you sech a unlandish-lookin’ dog?’ I say.  All she say when I ast her:  ‘Nemmine!’ she say, dess thataway.  ‘Nemmine!’ she say.  I reckon she ain’t goin’ tell nobody who give her this dog.”