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Back There In The Grass
by
“Oh, that doesn’t worry me,” said Graves. “But I am worried–worried sick. It’s early–shall we talk now, or wait till after lunch?”
“Now,” I said.
“Well,” said he, “you left me pretty well enthused on the subject of botany–so I went back there twice to look up grasses for you. The second time I went I got to a deep sort of valley where the grass is waist-high–that, by the way, is where the big monolith is–and that place was alive with things that were frightened and ran. I could see the directions they took by the way the grass tops acted. There were lots of loose stones about and I began to throw ’em to see if I could knock one of the things over. Suddenly all at once I saw a pair of bright little eyes peering out of a bunch of grass–I let fly at them, and something gave a sort of moan and thrashed about in the grass–and then lay still. I went to look, and found that I’d stunned–her. She came to and tried to bite me, but I had her by the scruff of the neck and she couldn’t. Further, she was sick with being hit in the chest with the stone, and first thing I knew she keeled over in the palm of my hand in a dead faint. I couldn’t find any water or anything–and I didn’t want her to die–so I brought her home. She was sick for a week–and I took care of her–as I would a sick pup–and she began to get well and want to play and romp and poke into everything. She’d get the lower drawer of my desk open and hide in it–or crawl into a rubber boot and play house. And she got to be right good company–same as any pet does–a cat or a dog–or a monkey–and naturally, she being so small, I couldn’t think of her as anything but a sort of little beast that I’d caught and tamed…. You see how it all happened, don’t you? Might have happened to anybody.”
“Why, yes,” I said. “If she didn’t give a man the horrors right at the start–I can understand making a sort of pet of her–but, man, there’s only one thing to do. Be persuaded. Take her back where you found her, and turn her loose.”
“Well and good,” said Graves. “I tried that, and next morning I found her at my door, sobbing–horrible, dry sobs–no tears…. You’ve said one thing that’s full of sense: she isn’t a pig–or a monkey–she’s a woman.”
“You don’t mean to say,” said I, “that that mite of a thing is in love with you?”
“I don’t know what else you’d call it.”
“Graves,” I said, “Miss Chester arrives by the next steamer. In the meanwhile something has got to be done.”
“What?” said he hopelessly.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think.”
The dog Don laid his head heavily on my knee, as if he wished to offer a solution of the difficulty.
A week before Miss Chester’s steamer was due the situation had not changed. Graves’s pet was as much a fixture of Graves’s house as the front door. And a man was never confronted with a more serious problem. Twice he carried her back into the grass and deserted her, and each time she returned and was found sobbing–horrible, dry sobs–on the porch. And a number of times we took her, or Graves did, in the pocket of his jacket, upon systematic searches for her people. Doubtless she could have helped us to find them, but she wouldn’t. She was very sullen on these expeditions and frightened. When Graves tried to put her down she would cling to him, and it took real force to pry her loose.
In the open she could run like a rat; and in open country it would have been impossible to desert her; she would have followed at Graves’s heels as fast as he could move them. But forcing through the thick grass tired her after a few hundred yards, and she would gradually drop farther and farther behind–sobbing. There was a pathetic side to it.