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There were lots of mouths to feed as Stubby's mother was always calling to her neighbour across the alley. But the yard gave Stubby an idea, and he earned some dimes and one quarter in the next week.
He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a trifle uncertainly. "Aren't you a trifle sweeping?" she inquired. "Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked. "I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we quarrel about this time?" "Anything you like," he made reckless answer.
He was one of those people those anarchists that were against the laws of the land. He'd done the very best he could and now the government was going to take Hero away from him just because he couldn't get couldn't get that other seventy cents. Stubby's mother didn't hear her son crying that night. That was because Stubby was successful in holding the pillow over his head.
There was not that about Stubby's short person to cause the hands of gentle ladies to move instinctively to his head. Stubby bristled. That is, he appeared to bristle. Inwardly, Stubby yearned, though he would have swung into his very best brigand manner on the spot were you to suggest so offensive a thing.
Stuart, and one day, a week or so later, the package was not in the box and a man who wore the kind of clothes Stubby's father wore came around the house and asked him what he was doing. Stubby was wary. "Oh, I've got a little job I do for Mr. Stuart." The man laughed. "I had a little job I did for Mr. Stuart, too. You paid in advance?" Stubby pricked up his ears.
"Oh, all right, I'll shoot him then!" called obliging Stubby, whistling for the dog while all morning long the woman grieved over having sent a helpless little dog away with that perfectly brutal paper boy! Stubby's mother was washing.
None of them seemed to be worrying about whether their dogs had checks. To Stubby's hot little brain and sore little heart came the thought that they didn't love their dogs any more than he loved Hero, either. But the government didn't care whether he loved Hero or not! Pooh! what was that to the government? All it cared about was getting the money.
"Why, an anarchist," her lord informed her, "is one that's against the government. He don't believe in the law and order. The real bad anarchists shoot them that tries to enforce the laws of the land. Guess if you'd read the papers these days you'd know." Stubby's brain had been going round and round and these words caught in it as it whirled.
The tone brought the blood to Stubby's face. "I think I got a right to," he said, his voice low. The man's face, which had been taunting, grew ugly. "Look a-here, young man, none o' your lip!" The tears rushed to Stubby's eyes but he stumbled on: "I guess Hero's got a right to some of my paper money when he goes with me every day on my route."
One day one of them asked Stubby why he didn't have a dog and he replied in surly fashion that he didn't have one 'cause he didn't want one. If he wanted one, he guessed he'd have one. And there was no one within ear-shot old enough or wise enough or tender enough? to know from the meanness of Stubby's tone, and by his evil scowl, that his heart was just breaking to own a dog.
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