Dreamers of the Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

dapple, kinked tail, and all.
    Mumma was just as determined to save me from my own bad judgment. “Agnes, you’re not making any sense” became “This is a mistake. That pup is inferior” and finally a tearful “I am only trying to guide you, Agnes. There’s no reason for you to speak to me in that tone.”
    Nevertheless, and for the first time in my life, I dared insist and I got my way. I named the pup Rosie. Before the day was over, I was so in love, it was difficult to leave her, even to go to sleep.
    The plan was for Mumma to raise Rosie until she was housebroken. (House-training, I must tell you, is a formality that can elude young dachshunds for some time; this is particularly true in climates that affront their sensibilities with outrageous meteorological insults. Rain, for example, or a startling gust of wind.) I always visited Mumma on weekends, of course, but knowing Rosie was waiting for me would make the routine a treat. When the school year was over, I would return as usual to spend the summer in Cedar Glen, helping Mumma with the garden and the canning. In autumn, I would take Rosie back to Cleveland with me. Either my landlady would agree to this, I decided, or I would just have to find a new place to live.
    Mumma had the satisfaction of being right about Rosie in some ways. My little pet was indeed a poor specimen of her breed. She matured to sixteen pounds—on the awkward border between the miniature and the standard for the breed. Her coat grew in long but thinnish. She was timid as well as unprepossessing, and spent her puppyhood hiding behind boxes in the kennel, darting out to steal food or toys from the stronger members of her litter.
    “She’s sneaky,” Mumma would report whenever I telephoned to check on her and Rosie. “She plots and she schemes.”
    “She’s clever,” I’d reply, “and resourceful.”
    “Well, I don’t know about
that.
”
    Those were the last words Mumma said to me, in life, a few days before the influenza swept my family away.
    Weeks later, when Mrs. Motta handed me all those awful telegrams, I hardly reacted at all. I was so…depleted, I suppose, that I simply did not have the energy to weep.
    In fact, I did not cry at all until I was strong enough to meet the lawyer at my mother’s house. You see, Mr. Reichardt brought Rosie with him that morning. She remembered me. And she came to me when I called.
             
    Well, three times out of five, anyway. Dachshunds have their own agenda and can be stubborn about seeing their plans through to completion. What Rosie lacked in consistency, she made up for in enthusiasm. Most of the time when I called her name, she sprinted back, her long ears cocked and flying like a little girl’s pigtails. Each encounter was a glorious reunion, even if we’d been parted for only a minute or two. I had never felt so beloved.
    She went with me everywhere, and there was so much work to do! Mr. Reichardt took on as much as he could of this necessary tidying of lives cut short, but he had many such estates to settle, so a great deal fell to me. The probate courts were jammed. Rosie and I spent hours waiting in queues that often turned out to be the wrong ones. More than once, someone in the line fainted, sending panic through the room. Since we’d been caught out by the second wave of influenza, illness was never far from our minds.
    Douglas and Lillie and the boys had lived on the campus in a house provided for them by Oberlin. The dean told me that I could take all the time I needed to vacate the premises, but then he checked my progress every day, and frowned significantly when a bare week had passed. Not wanting to be a bother, I had their belongings boxed for transport and delivered to Mumma’s house in Cedar Glen. I turned next to Uncle John’s estate, hoping it would be relatively simple. He was a bachelor lawyer who had left his affairs in good order. Even so, there were many accounts to process and outstanding