“What are you driving at, anyway?” asked Dinky-Dunk.
“I was just wondering,” I said as I sat staring into Bobs’ eyes, “how strange it would be if, after all, God was really a dog, the loving and faithful Watch-Dog of His universe!”
“Please don’t be blasphemous,” Dinky-Dunk coldly remarked.
“But I’m not blasphemous,” I tried to tell him. “And I was never more serious in my life. There’s even something sacred about it, once you look at it in the right way. Just think of the Shepherd-Dog of the Stars, the vigilant and affectionate Watcher who keeps the wandering worlds in their folds! That’s not one bit worse than the lamb idea, only we’ve got so used to the lamb it doesn’t shock us into attention any more. Why, just look at these eyes of Bobs right now. There’s more nobility and devotion and trust and love in them than was ever in all the eyes of all the lambs that ever frisked about the fields and sheep-folds from Dan to Beersheba!”
“Your theory, I believe, is entertained by the Igorrotes,” remarked Dinky-Dunk as he made a pretense of turning back to his tractor-pamphlet. “The Igorrotes and other barbarians,” he repeated, so as to be sure the screw was being turned in the proper direction.
“And now I know why she said the more she knew about men the better she liked dogs,” I just as coldly remarked, remembering Madame de Stael. “And I believe you’re jealous of poor old Bobs just because he loves me more than you do.”
Dinky-Dunk put down his pamphlet. Then he called Bobs over to his side of the table. But Bobs, I noticed, didn’t go until I’d nodded approval. So Dinky-Dunk took his turn at sitting with Bobs’ nose in his hand and staring down into the fathomless orbs that stared up at him.
“You’ll never get a lady, me lud, to look up at you like that,” I told him.
“Perhaps they have,” retorted Dinky-Dunk, with his face slightly averted.
“And having done so in the past, there’s the natural chance that they’ll do so in the future,” I retorted, making it half a question and half a statement. But he seemed none too pleased at that thrust, and he didn’t even answer me when I told him I supposed I was his Airedale, because they say an Airedale is a one-man dog.