Penny by Hal; Borland Page B

was sure she could swim—any dog can swim, apparently—but I was equally sure that she would never go swimming just for the fun of it.
    Barbara changed to a suit and went down to the dock. I put on trunks and followed her. She swam. I got in the kayak and went out with her quite a way. Barbara is a fish, or an otter. The water is her element. I can swim, but I would rather not. A dry-land plainsman by birth and upbringing, I don’t trust water without a boat under me, and not all the way even then. I enjoy sailing a small boat or paddling a kayak, but swimming is a chore for me. So I accompanied her in the kayak, and after her swim, while she lay in the sun and basked, I took the sailboat out for half an hour.
    Coming back in, I heard Penny barking excitedly at the cabin. Barbara was still down on the dock. She called to Penny, tried to quiet her, but she seemed to be excited by the sailboat, that big expanse of white sail, maybe. She danced all over the deck, barking. I docked the boat. Barbara had gone up to the cabin. Penny was quiet. I heard Barbara say, “Penny, Penny, Penny,” gently scolding. I took in the sail and went up the steps to the cabin. Barbara had a rag and was mopping up a corner of the linoleumed floor. Penny sat across the room from her, crestfallen.
    â€œWhat happened?” I asked.
    Barbara shook her head. “She got so excited, apparently over the sight of the boat coming in, that she spilled. Just as I came in the door. She knew what she had done. She must have been trained not to wet the floor. She seemed to expect to be walloped, maybe with a rolled-up newspaper.”
    We got the floor dried, and I put away the sail and hauled in the boat, flipped it over on the dock—I don’t like to bail a boat, so I haul mine and turn it over on the dock, and let it drain. We dressed, closed the cabin and went up to the car. Penny was so glad to get away from the cabin and that frightening deck that she didn’t even use the steps; she went right up the slope, through a clump of ground hemlock, over a stump and around a big boulder. She was the first one in the car.
    We got home, and Penny didn’t even wait to come into the house. She got a drink at the cow trough, then went across the home pasture and up the mountainside. It was just before five o’clock. She was gone till almost eight, when she came home sopping, bedraggled and bushed. Whether it was a reaction to the trip to the lake or what it was, I had no idea. But she had to go, and she had to stay. And she had to come back looking as though she had spent half her life in a mudhole. She was a thorough mess.
    I cleaned her off somewhat, we let her into the back porch and fed her, then I took her to the brooder house for the night. No loafing under the bench in the living room, and no family and fireside that evening. Off to bed she went, unwillingly but without too much complaint. She barked once or twice, but that was all. She was tired enough to sleep, and apparently she went to sleep very soon.
    That evening Barbara called Carol to ask a few questions about Penny’s habits. Yes, Carol said, Penny was easily embarrassed, and when that happens she usually goes off somewhere and sulks for hours. Tender feelings, in other words. Also, that she had a sweet tooth, would eat almost anything that had sugar on or in it. And, finally, yes, they missed her, but they were glad to be rid of the responsibility of a dog that might bite other people’s children. “You never know, when a dog gets that way, when it may turn on you. Or the baby, of course.”
    And that seemed to be that. Penny was embarrassed, you might say, by her accident down at the cabin. She wet the floor, and she knew that was forbidden. So when she got home to the farm she took off and was gone three hours. Sulked, maybe. Or maybe she just ran the rebellion out of her, soaked it out in the mudholes and came home a tired, dirty mess.
    She