"What are you grinning at, Crosby?"
"At my own thoughts, which are distinctly comic."
"Well, don't keep the joke to yourself."
"Ah, that's the funny part of it. You wouldn't think it at all amusing."
CHAPTER XXIV.
COMO'S ERRAND.
Although the heat was great, for the sky was cloudless, and the shade, where there was any, inviting and cool, Alec's trusty messenger tarried not for rest or coolness. He seemed to know the importance of the news he carried, for he trotted along without a pause. The only time that Como had travelled that way had been the night before, but with that unerring instinct, which we can so little understand, he made straight for Wandaroo. Except once, to drink at a little cattle-trampled pool which the recent rains had partly filled, he never stopped till he reached the head station, where he arrived dusty, foot-sore, and panting, about two hours after he left Norton's Gap.
Dogs generally seem to possess a keen sense of duty, a quality which is, unfortunately, only too often wanting in man, the nobler animal; and Como made no fuss, and took no credit to himself for this arduous morning's work, knowing that, after all, he had only done what he ought. Mankind, on the other hand, which will not admit the extent of its moral obligations, generally greatly plumes itself when it does occasionally recognise one of its bounden responsibilities, never thinking for a moment that the virtuous action which it considers it has done is really an imperative duty.
Como, who was a privileged animal, made straight for the large general room of the house, and without being seen by any one, entered the door. Finding the room quite silent and empty, he passed carefully out between the muslin curtains on to the sunny boards of the broad verandah. He looked up and down it, but finding that it was as unoccupied as the room, he turned, and pattering along the planks, ran to the kitchen.
Mrs. Beffling, the cook, was standing over the fire, screening her hot, red face from the blaze with a tin plate, cooking something nourishing for the patient, and being intent upon her work, as a good cook should be, she did not observe the presence of the dog. But Como, thinking it was time that some one noticed him, lifted a paw and laid it on her dress. The good woman looked down, and recognising the missing dog, she dropped the tin plate with a crash upon the floor, and lifting up her hands, opened her mouth preparatory to a good scream, but remembering the instructions given that morning by the doctor she snapped her jaws together again before a sound had had time to come out.