Hotel for Dogs by Lois Duncan ch 2-2
“Andi, no!” she exclaimed when she saw Andi standing in the doorway. “Take that dog right back outside!” “But, Mom, he's hungry,” Andi told her. “We can't let a sweet thing like this starve to death right on our front steps. Can't I give him a bowl of milk?” “No, you can't,” Mrs. Walker said firmly. “If you do that you'll be encouraging him to stay. When you feed a stray animal you're inviting it to make itself at home.” “Just a little milk, Mom?” Andi begged. “Please? Just think if this was Bebe, all hungry and nobody feeding her —” Her eyes began to get teary again at the thought.
“Well, he's not Bebe,” Mrs. Walker said. “He probably has a perfectly good home around here and just wandered away from it. Now, take him back outside and give him a little shove to get him moving. Maybe he'll take himself home in time for dinner.” “He doesn't have a home,” Andi said with certainty. “He doesn't have a collar or tag or anything, and he's so dirty and shabby and neglected —” “Outside, Andi,” Mrs. Walker said. “Now! Before Aunt Alice comes down from her nap and gets a sneezing spell. This is her home, honey, and we are her houseguests. We have to live by Aunt Alice's rules and fit into her way of doing things.” “Oh, all right,” Andi said mournfully, and carried the dog outside. “Poor baby,” she murmured, rocking him back and forth in her arms. “Poor little unwanted thing!” Glancing up the street to the left, she said, “There's no sense sending you off in that direction. The people who own the yellow house are off on vacation or something, and there's the vacant lot and the empty brown house. The other direction's worse.” She gave a shudder as she turned to the right. “That horrid Gordon boy lives there. He'd probably pull your legs off.” Looking across the street, she noticed a pleasant gray house with a swing set in the side yard and bicycles parked out front. “Maybe you'll find a home there,” she said, trying to sound hopeful. “At least, it looks like your best bet.” Carrying the dog gently, she crossed the street and set him down in front of the gray house and gave him a little push in the direction of the porch. Then, quickly so that he would not follow her, she ran back across the street.
A new thought struck her just as she ran up the steps. What if Bebe ran away! What if she ran away from the Arquettes and set off to find me! What if she's out wandering now, just like that poor dog, with nobody to feed or care for her! It was such a dreadful thought that she felt sick to her stomach. Hurrying into the house, she rushed up the stairs to the room that was hers — it had been Aunt Alice's sewing room, but it contained a couch that folded down into a bed — and flew inside and slammed the door. On the table by the bed were a pencil and note pad. Snatching them up, Andi threw herself across the couch and began to compose a poem. “Bebe” was the title, and the words came pouring out, hurling themselves upon the paper: Weeping through the morning mists, I wandered all alone, Searching for the only thing That I could call my own. Whenever she was upset, Andi wrote poetry, and by now she had a large collection of poems. She wrote when she was happy, too, and sometimes when she was bored, but those poems never seemed to turn out as well as the ones she wrote when she was miserable.
When her poems were completed, she copied them neatly onto clean paper and sent them off to Good Housekeeping and The New Yorker, which had been magazines on her parents' coffee table at home. She had started doing that the year she turned nine. She had heard somewhere once that Shakespeare had written his first play by the time he was eleven, and she had made up her mind that if she reached the age of eleven without having had a poem published, she would give up writing and turn to something else.
Sometimes poems were hard to write, and sometimes they were easy, but because she was already so worked up and filled with feelings, Andi found that this poem was the easiest she had ever written. Words came spilling out onto the page without her even having to think about them.
She was just finishing the last line when there was a rap on the door.
“Andi?” It was Bruce's voice. “Mom wants you to come down and set the table.” “Is it that time already?” Andi glanced up in astonishment to see dusk hanging heavy outside the window. “I didn't even know you were home.” Sliding the paper into her notebook, she got up and stretched. She felt good, as though all the unhappiness that had been inside her had drained off onto that sheet of paper. Tossing the notebook back onto the table, she left the room and went downstairs.
It began to rain as she set the table for dinner. It started as just a sprinkle, the lightest, slightest sound, like a gentle tap-tap-tap on the roof. By the time she had the napkins and silverware on, however, the tapping had increased to a roar.
“I'd better check the upstairs windows,” Bruce said and went up to the second floor. “Dad's coming,” he called down a moment later. “I can see his car.” “I hope he took an umbrella with him,” Mrs. Walker called from the kitchen, where she was helping Aunt Alice with the mashed potatoes. The drum of the rain drowned out the sound of the car in the driveway, but they all heard Mr. Walker's feet as they thudded on the porch steps. Andi left the table and ran to open the door for him.
He came in dripping and shaking himself the way he would have in the brick hallway back home. Then he realized what he was doing and said, “Oh, my gosh, the rugs!” “Quick — get newspapers! A bath mat! Bruce, run for some towels!” Aunt Alice came fluttering out of the kitchen to dab helplessly with the corner of a dish towel at the dampness on the snowy carpet.
Behind her father, Andi saw the water falling in a solid sheet as heavy and loud as a waterfall. Mr. Walker was shoving his wet hair back from his face. Bruce was rushing down the stairs, his arms filled with bath towels. Mrs. Walker was hurrying in from the kitchen with a roll of paper towels, her face creased with worry.
“Oh, dear,” she was saying. “I hope the carpet doesn't stain!” They were all so occupied that there was one thing they did not see. Andi saw it, and she opened her mouth to speak. Then, slowly, she closed it again. I'm not going to say a word, she thought, as the little brown dog with the long wet hair came scampering in the door between her father's feet and scurried down the hall and up the stairs.
