diphtheria, Mrs.
Trevor, in her heart, set down the death as a judgment on Sophia for
criminal carelessness; and when young Oliver Manningtree grew up to be
an intolerable young Turk and savage, she looked on Marmaduke and,
thanking heaven that he was not as other boys were, enfolded him more
than ever beneath her motherly wing. When Oliver went to school in the
town and tore his clothes, and rolled in mud and punched other boys'
heads, Marmaduke remained at home under the educational charge of a
governess. Oliver, lean and lanky and swift-eyed, swaggered through
the streets unattended from the first day they sent him to a
neighbouring kindergarten. As the months and years of his childish
life passed, he grew more and more independent and vagabond. He swore
blood brotherhood with a butcher-boy and, unknown to his pious
parents, became the leader of a ferocious gang of pirates. Marmaduke,
on the other hand, was never allowed to cross the road without
feminine escort. Oliver had the profoundest contempt for Marmaduke.
Being two years older, he kicked him whenever he had a chance.
Marmaduke loathed him. Marmaduke shrank into Miss Gunter, the
governess's, skirts whenever he saw him. Mrs. Trevor therefore
regarded Oliver as the youthful incarnation of Beelzebub, and
quarrelled bitterly with her sister-in-law.

One day, Oliver, with three or four of his piratical friends, met
Marmaduke and Miss Gunter and a little toy terrier in the High Street.
The toy terrier was attached by a lead to Miss Gunter on the one side,
Marmaduke by a hand on the other. Oliver straddled rudely across the
path.

"Hallo! Look at thet two little doggies!" he cried. He snapped his
fingers at the terrier. "Come along, Tiny!" The terrier yapped. Oliver
grinned and turned to Marmaduke. "Come along, Fido, dear little
doggie."

"You're a nasty, rude, horrid boy, and I shall tell your mother,"
declared Miss Gunter indignantly.

But Oliver and his pirates laughed with the truculence befitting their
vocation, and bowing with ironical politeness, let their victim depart
to the parody of a popular song: "Good-bye, Doggie, we shall miss
you."

From that day onwards Marmaduke was known as "Doggie" throughout all
Durdlebury, save to his mother and Miss Gunter. The Dean himself grew
to think of him as "Doggie." People to this day call him Doggie,
without any notion of the origin of the name.

To preserve him from persecution, Mrs. Trevor jealously guarded