“That’s where it is,” said Joshua as he concluded, and then his eye fell on Tim’s eager upturned face.
“Dorg, eh?” he said, when the boy had made him understand what he wanted. “Where is he?”
“There,” said Tim, pointing to where the dog still sat shivering near the old chestnut woman.
Joshua gazed at the animal in silence, and sucked a straw which he had in his mouth reflectively. Tim looked anxiously up into his face. Would he take a fancy to him? The landlord had now drawn near, and also an inquisitive ostler. The old chestnut-seller ceased to rock herself to and fro, and turned her head towards the group, so that the dog, so lonely a few minutes ago, had suddenly become a centre of interest. He seemed to wonder at this, but he scarcely moved his eyes, with a mute appeal in them, from his first friend, Tim. At last, after what seemed an immense silence, Joshua spoke.
“He ain’t a beauty—not to look at,” he said.
This might have sounded discouraging to anyone who did not know Joshua, but it was rather the reverse to Tim.
“He’d be werry useful in the cart,” he suggested, taking care not to appear too anxious.
But now the landlord, feeling it time to offer his opinion, broke into the discussion.
“There’s no doubt, as the boy says, that you’d find a dog useful, but I wouldn’t have a brute of a cur like that, if I was you. Now I could give you as pretty a pup to bring up to the business as you could wish to see. A real game un. Death to anything reasonable he’d be in a year’s time. Them nasty mongrels is never no good.”
Now this adverse opinion was, strange to say, sufficient to make up Joshua’s mind in the dog’s favour; he always took a contrary view of things to the landlord on principle, because it encouraged conversation, and this habit was so strong that he at once began to see the special advantages of a mongrel.