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A Birthday Gift by Jean Fritz and Tom Clute

star 5

Black Cindy lay in the corner on her blanket and looked proudly at her eight little cocker spaniels. Seven of the puppies were black, as black as Black Cindy herself, as black as their father, and so healthy and strong that any mother would be proud of them. But the eighth puppy wasn’t like that at all. He was thin and, because he was a different color, anyone could see right away that he was the smallest of them. He was a blond cocker.

When Mr. Buell Andrus, Black Cindy's owner, found the puppies, he smiled.

“Good girl, Cindy,” he said. “They look just as nice as they always do. Except for the little blond.”

Black Cindy shook her tail back and forth and began licking the puppies to show what a good mother she was.

After that, everyone who saw Black Cindy’s puppies said the same thing. “Nice little black cockers,” they said. “Too bad about the blond one.”

Perhaps that was what gave the little blond puppy the idea right from the beginning that he was different. As he grew older, he romped around with his brothers and sisters but, perhaps because he knew he was different, he ran a little faster and jumped a little higher, and played a little harder than the others. But no one noticed that. All anyone noticed was that the little blond puppy was too small.

As soon as the puppies were old enough to leave Black Cindy, Mr. Andrus called up the newspaper in Adrian, Michigan, where he lived. He asked the newspaper to run an advertisement of cocker spaniels for sale. People who were looking for a pet began going out to Mr. Andrus’ house to look at the puppies.

The puppies were inside a wire pen now in the back yard. Whenever anyone came to see them, they would run around the fence and bark their little puppy barks. The blond puppy barked the loudest and ran the fastest but no one paid any attention. “What nice black puppies,” everyone said. Then Mr. Andrus would bring the black puppies out of the pen so that people could see each one more closely. He showed the people what long ears the black puppies had and what fine coats of fur.

One by one the black puppies were sold until all that were left in the pen were one black puppy and, of course, the blond one that was too small and too thin for anyone to want.

“We’ll never get rid of that blond,” Mr. Andrus thought one day as he gave the two puppies their food in the pen. “Think I’ll run another advertisement in the Adrian paper and see if we can’t get him off our hands over the weekend.”

The next day Mr. Andrus’ advertisement appeared in the paper.

FOR SALE. Cocker Spaniel puppies. Buell Andrus, Church Street, Fairfield

Not many people noticed the advertisement. It was in small print in the back of the paper, and it came out on a very hot day in August. Most people were too hot to read small print about cocker spaniel puppies. Many of the people in Adrian weren’t even home in the afternoon when the paper boy delivered the paper. They had gone swimming or they were away on vacation.

When the paper boy came to the little gray house in Dennis Street, he found Tom Clute sitting on his porch.

“Toss it here, son,” Tom called to the boy. He caught the paper and, as the boy went on to the next house, Tom opened the paper and began to read. He planned to read only the front page because he had some errands to do before supper, Tom was a jukebox owner in Adrian. His work often took him out in the late afternoon and evening. Tom read the headlines on the front page and the weather report in the upper right-hand corner and then, instead of putting the paper down as he had meant to do, he turned the page. He read that page and the next page and he kept on reading until he came to the last page. He even read the advertisements. “For Sale,” he read, “Cocker Spaniel puppies...”

Tom let the paper fall to the floor and he looked dreamily out into Dennis Street. “That’s what I’d like,” he thought. “A dog.” He imagined how it would be if he had one of those cocker spaniels now. He could take the little cocker along to work with him. He would whistle and the dog would jump into the car, and between stops at the restaurants where his jukeboxes were, he would talk to the dog. He might even teach him some tricks. Then later when Tom came home, the dog would be company for him. Of course, his mother was visiting him, but usually he lived alone. A dog would certainly be good company. He was a grown man, he thought, and he was still thinking about dogs the same way he had when he was a boy. He’d only had one dog then, a funny little brown dog he had called Prince, and how he had loved him! He remembered how he used to think that some day Prince was going to become famous like Rin Tin Tin. Maybe he would save someone from drowning. Tom had thought, or pull someone out of a burning building.

Of course nothing like that had happened. Only in the movies and in the dreams of boys do things like that happen, and Tom smiled to remember his own dreams. It was time to go to work.

First he went into the house to say good-bye to his mother. He found her in the kitchen, cutting up apples for a pie. Tom reached over and stole a piece of sliced apple and leaned against the kitchen doorway while he ate it.

“Say, Mom” he said. “Remember that little brown dog I had when I was a kid?”

Tom’s mother looked up from the apple pie. “I certainly do remember Prince. Whatever made you think of him?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Something I saw in the paper, I guess. An advertisement of cocker spaniels for sale.”

After Tom had gone to work, his mother went on with her pie. “A dog might be nice for Tom,” she thought. “Tomorrow would be Tom’s birthday. A dog might be just the thing. Some friends were planning a surprise party here at his house. Maybe they would like to know about that advertisement in the paper.” Tom’s mother cut a half-moon in the middle of her pie, and put it in the oven. Then she went to the telephone.

The next clay Tom worked all day, and it was a lucky thing that he did. He didn’t go near Dennis Street, so he didn’t see his mother making a big birthday cake. He didn’t go near Fairfield where Buell Andrus lived, so he didn’t see his friend Ann standing in the back yard looking into a wire pen.

“I want a puppy to give as a birthday present,” Ann said.

Mr. Andrus went into the pen and brought out the black puppy. He pulled the puppy’s ears down to his nose to show how long they were. Then he set him down on the ground. The little black puppy looked carefully around him at the strangeness outside his pen. He took a step forward, then he looked around again.

“He’s a nice-looking dog,” Mr. Andrus said. “Big for his age, too.

You can have him for fifty dollars.”

Inside the wire pen the little blond puppy was racing around and around. He poked his nose through the wire fence; he stood on his hind legs and he barked, although the sound wasn’t exactly a bark. He made a funny little up-and-down noise in his throat that sounded as if he were trying to talk and as if he had a great deal to say.

Ann looked over at the little blond cocker and laughed. “Why don’t you bring him out?” she said. “You want to see the little blond?” Mr. Andrus asked. “You don’t know much about dogs, do you?” But he went over to the pen and let the blond dog out.

The blond dog didn’t stand around carefully for even one minute. He put his nose to the ground where there were all sorts of exciting smells waiting for him. He followed the smells and he followed his nose as fast as he could go, exploring the new world of the back yard. Then he came back to Ann and he talked to her. Up and down in his throat he told her all about the smells and all about himself and maybe, if anyone had been able to understand him, he even told about some of the wonderful plans he had for himself when he grew up.

Ann smiled. “I think I’d like to take the little blond,” she said. She paid for the blond puppy and Mr. Andrus put him in a traveling box. Then Ann put the box in her car and went back to Dennis Street to wait for the party to begin.

At six o’clock everything was ready. The table was set for the party. The guests were gathered in the dining room, waiting for Tom, and in Tom’s chair was a great, long box tied up in white paper with an enormous ribbon.

The little blond puppy sat inside his dark box and he kept very quiet. He could hear all kinds of new noises and smell all kinds of new smells, and through his little hole he saw many things he had never seen before. Suddenly there was a tremendous noise of voices, as loud as if all the dogs in the world had started to bark.

“Surprise! Surprise!” the voices said. “Happy birthday! Open it, Tom! Go ahead and open it!”

The blond puppy rushed out of his box and onto Tom’s lap. He put his front paws on Tom’s chest and licked his face.

All the time that Tom and his guests were at dinner and later when they were in the living room, the little blond puppy rushed around the house, into every corner he could find. But between jumps he came to Tom and he talked to him, up and down in his throat.

“He looks pretty thin,” Tom’s mother said.

“Rather small for a cocker, isn’t he?” one of the guests asked.

Tom reached down and lifted the little blond puppy onto his lap. He looked at the puppy’s eager brown eyes.

“He looks great to me,” Tom said. “He looks perfect.”

“Well, I expect we can fatten him up,” Tom’s mother said. “I hope so. What are you going to call him, Tom?”

“I think I’ll call him Prince,” Tom said.

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