As yet I had noticed him only as the returned traveler notices the faithful old dog that greets him by lifting his eyes adoringly and wagging his tail. I saw now that the intervening two and a half years had aged him. He had grown white and waxy; his thin gray hair was thinner. A trembling, like that of a delicately poised leaf on a day when there is little wind, shook his hands, and the left corner of his lower lip had the pathetic quiver of a child’s when it is about to sag in a great weeping.
As I had paid him so little attention on the dock, I picked up the hand resting on his knee and pressed it.
He responded with a long, harsh breath which, starting as a sigh of comfort, became something inarticulately emotional.
“Oh, Slim! I’ve got ye back, ’aven’t I?”
“Seems like it, Lovey.” I laughed without feeling mirthful.
“Ye look awful, don’t ye?”
“I suppose I do.”
“But it don’t make no difference to me, it don’t. I’d rather ’ave ye all chawed up like this than not ’ave ye at all.”
“Thank you, Lovey.”