Free The Black Mountains by Janet Tanner Page B

window banged angrily, and suppressing a grin, Ted went into the house. When he came out again, Charlie had disappeared and Charlotte and Peggy were going over the whole incident again. But the dog was still there, and as soon as Ted put the scraps down he gobbled them up, wagging his tail excitedly, then jumping up to look for more.
    â€œCan he have the bone from the meat at dinner-time?” he asked Charlotte, and she sighed resignedly, shaking her head and smiling.
    â€œIf he’s still here, I dare say he can. But he’ll be gone by then, I expect. He knows where his home is if you don’t.”
    â€œI suppose so,” Ted said, realizing he was quite fond of the creature. “ But if he is a stray—do you think I could keep him?” he ventured.
    Charlotte laughed shortly, looking at the Durrants’ closed door.
    â€œI should think so. But if he’s a rover, you won’t have him long. He’ll stay just as long as he feels like it, and one day he’ll disappear just like he came. So don’t get too attached to him, son.”
    Ted said nothing. He liked the idea of the dog being a rover. There was a free feel to the word that excited him deep down.
    But he hoped the dog would stay, anyway.

Chapter Three
    In spite of Charlotte’s prediction that the dog would disappear as suddenly as he had come, Nipper, as Ted named him, was still around the next day—and the day after that.
    â€œI think you ought to put a card down in the paper-shop window,” Jack suggested. “ Somebody might be worried about him.”
    Charlotte laughed shortly. She was of the opinion that if the dog had a good home to go back to, he’d go—and in any case, Ted was so attached to the little mongrel that she couldn’t help hoping he would stay. It was good to see Ted caring about something.
    But Jack couldn’t bear the thought that somewhere the dog’s owner might be wretched with anxiety, and he insisted a card in the paper-shop window was the right thing to do. Although he and Ted almost came to blows about it, he wrote it out and took it down, and for a week or two Charlotte—and Ted—lived in fear of someone knocking on the door to claim Nipper.
    But no one did.
    When the weather grew colder, Ted made up a bed for him in the wash-house, and he was even sometimes allowed into the kitchen.
    Christmas came and went, and Nipper was still around, and he was there the following June for the street party the rank held to celebrate the coronation of King George and Queen Mary. This promised to be the biggest and the best ever held in the rank. From the moment the coronation date was public, there had been talk of a party, but it had taken Peggy Yelling to organize it.
    â€œShe’s got more time than most of us with her family all grown-up,” Charlotte said, and James knew she would have loved to organize the party herself, in honour of the occasion. He was quietly amused by the way that Charlotte idolized the Royal Family and all they did. Her military background had given her a liking for ceremonial, and she avidly read every newspaper account she could lay her hands on, snipping out the pictures and getting Jack to paste them into a scrapbook for her.
    But arranging a party of this size was not a job for a woman with a demanding family, a baby and a cleaning post. It needed someone like Peggy, enthusiastic, efficient and cheerfully bossy, who could shoulder the responsibility and enjoy it She attacked the task with the same vigour she brought to delivering babies, and before long the plans had grown to take in some of the people who lived in the cottages on the hill as well as the twenty houses in the rank.
    â€œOh, let them come—they’ve nowhere to have a party of their own. And it’s the more the merrier as far as I’m concerned,” she said, cheerfully overruling those who thought the rank should keep itself to itself.
    Soon