Free Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker, Colleen Bresse, Regina Barreca Page A

Junior would be the very picture of his father, when they got the bands off his teeth, and little Charlotte strongly resembled her mother. Friends often commented on what a nice arrangement it was.
    Mr. Durant smiled good-naturedly through their racket, carefully hanging up his coat and hat. There was even pleasure for him in the arrangement of his apparel on the cool, shiny knob of the hatrack. Everything was pleasant, tonight. Even the children’s noise couldn’t irritate him.
    Eventually he discovered the cause of the commotion. It was a little stray dog that had come to the back door. They were out in the kitchen helping Freda, and Charlotte thought she heard something scratching, and Freda said nonsense, but Charlotte went to the door, anyway, and there was this little dog, trying to get in out of the wet. Mother helped them give it a bath, and Freda fed it, and now it was in the living-room. Oh, Father, couldn’t they keep it, please, couldn’t they, couldn’t they, please, Father, couldn’t they? It didn’t have any collar on it—so you see it didn’t belong to anybody. Mother said all right, if he said so, and Freda liked it fine.
    Mr. Durant still smiled his gentle smile. “We’ll see,” he said.
    The children looked disappointed, but not despondent. They would have liked more enthusiasm, but “we’ll see,” they knew by experience, meant a leaning in the right direction.
    Mr. Durant proceeded to the living-room, to inspect the visitor. It was not a beauty. All too obviously, it was the living souvenir of a mother who had never been able to say no. It was a rather stocky little beast with shaggy white hair and occasional, rakishly placed patches of black. There was a suggestion of Sealyham terrier about it, but that was almost blotted out by hosts of reminiscences of other breeds. It looked, on the whole, like a composite photograph of Popular Dogs. But you could tell at a glance that it had a way with it. Scepters have been tossed aside for that.
    It lay, now, by the fire, waving its tragically long tail wistfully, its eyes pleading with Mr. Durant to give it a fair trial. The children had told it to lie down there, and so it did not move. That was something it could do toward repaying them.
    Mr. Durant warmed to it. He did not dislike dogs, and he somewhat fancied the picture of himself as a soft-hearted fellow who extended shelter to friendless animals. He bent, and held out a hand to it.
    “Well, sir,” he said, genially. “Come here, good fellow.”
    The dog ran to him, wriggling ecstatically. It covered his cold hand with joyous, though respectful kisses, then laid its warm, heavy head on his palm. “You are beyond a doubt the greatest man in America,” it told him with its eyes.
    Mr. Durant enjoyed appreciation and gratitude. He patted the dog graciously.
    “Well, sir, how’d you like to board with us?” he said. “I guess you can plan to settle down.” Charlotte squeezed Junior’s arm wildly. Neither of them, though, thought it best to crowd their good fortune by making any immediate comment on it.
    Mrs. Durant entered from the kitchen, flushed with her final attentions to the chowder. There was a worried line between her eyes. Part of the worry was due to the dinner, and part to the disturbing entrance of the little dog into the family life. Anything not previously included in her day’s schedule threw Mrs. Durant into a state resembling that of one convalescing from shellshock. Her hands jerked nervously, beginning gestures that they never finished.
    Relief smoothed her face when she saw her husband patting the dog. The children, always at ease with her, broke their silence and jumped about her, shrieking that Father said it might stay.
    “There, now—didn’t I tell you what a dear, good father you had?” she said in the tone parents employ when they have happened to guess right. “That’s fine, Father. With that big yard and all, I think we’ll make out all right. She