Chapter 20: Fidessa and Her Mistress

On the very afternoon when Nora and Belle had their falling out, Julia, after finishing her practising, had gone for a walk. It was a bright, clear day, and she wished that she had some other girl to walk with her. For when by herself she never ventured beyond the entrance to the park, although if her cousin or one of her school friends could go with her, her aunt had no objection to her walking in the park itself. One of the disadvantages of her friendship with Ruth Roberts lay in the fact that they could seldom be together in the afternoons. Their homes were too far apart. Sometimes on Saturday Julia would go to Roxbury to spend the half day with Ruth, and on other Saturdays Ruth would come in town to stay with Julia. It was hard to tell which was the pleasanter thing to do. At Roxbury, there were Ruth’s ponies to drive, and in snowy weather a chance to coast down a quiet side street. Out of town there are many more chances for fun for girls past sixteen than can possibly be found in town or the city. When Ruth visited Julia the two usually went to a concert accompanied by Mrs. Barlow, or when she could not go, by one of their teachers. Of late Julia had been in the habit of inviting Miss South to go with them. Brenda never went to these concerts. She was not fond of music, and she did not pretend to be. The only matinee that she cared for was the theatre, and as her parent were decidedly opposed to her going often to the play, she could not indulge herself half as much as she wished.

On this particular afternoon Julia felt especially lonely. Doubtless no small part of her loneliness came from the fact that she was perfectly well aware of the presence of the “Four” in the house, and though she had tried not even to say to herself that she felt slighted, she would have been less than human not to feel that her cousin had slighted her in not asking her to the club. “To look up and not down, to look out and not in,” had been one of the lessons which her father had been most careful to teach her. It was therefore not very often that she let her thoughts dwell too long on her own affairs. But on this particular day she felt a little low-spirited and inclined to regard herself as rather ill-used. Without realizing it she had walked some distance into the park, and pausing to admire a bit of distant view that she was able to get from a slightly elevated point, she lingered a moment or two longer to decide whether it was an animal or a child that she heard crying behind a small clump of bushes near by. When she found that there was no other way of satisfying herself, she walked up to the bushes, and there, standing forlornly on three legs, was a tiny Italian greyhound.

“Why, you poor little thing!” she cried, “what is the matter?” and as she spoke she took the little creature in her arms.

“Is your leg broken, or sprained, or what?” she continued, though of course she did not expect any reply from the dog. The greyhound showed great joy at the sound of a friendly voice, and looked up in Julia’s face with an expression of confidence and gratitude.

“Come, I am going to put you down on the ground for a minute to see whether you are hurt, or only pretending.” So, suiting the action to the word, she stood the little dog on its feet. As if understanding her purpose, the little creature limped in front of her for a few steps, but the limp was so slight as to assure Julia that no serious accident had befallen the leg, which the dog still seemed inclined to hold off the ground.

“Now let me see if your collar tells who your owner is,” added Julia, and she bent down towards the dog. There to her surprise, she read in clear letters, “Fidessa, Madame du Launy.” Now immediately Julia decided that the owner of the dog must be the mistress of the large house near the school, about which her friends were so curious. In an instant, too, she remembered that she had seen this little animal, or one very like it, taking its exercise in front of the great, mysterious house. Julia had always been fond of dogs, and the little trembling creature appealed strongly to her. For a moment she almost wished that there were no name on the collar, so that she might have kept it with her for a day or two while finding the owner. “O, if only it had no owner, what joy!” she thought, as she gazed into its dark eyes, “to keep it for myself!”