"Don't you think," ventured Julius, "it would be well to bring him out to our house for a little visit, to cheer him up?"
"Not much!" answered Mr. Nimrod, promptly. "I never could break him in then. He has run away twice already, and both times I followed him and found him hanging around the house you moved from. Lucky the trail was cold. If he once finds out where you are, the jig's up."
When Julius came home at noon, we sat at the table listless and dejected, now and then making fitful attempts to converse. The dainty noon meal had suddenly lost flavor after we had exchanged a few sentences about "Poor, hungry Bruno!"
Were we to eat, drink, and be merry, while our faithful friend starved for love of us!
After Julius had returned to the office, there was such a tugging at my heart-strings that I—well, yes, I did, I cried! How I regretted that I had never cultivated an intimacy with Mrs. Nimrod, so that I might have "run in" to call, and thus have an opportunity to comfort the poor homesick fellow!
Julius saw the tear-traces when he returned towards evening, and proposed a stroll down town; thinking, I suppose, that if we sat at home we should be sure to talk of Bruno and be melancholy.
We walked through all the principal streets of the town, meeting and greeting friends and acquaintances, stopping to glance at new goods in several of the shops; bringing up at last in the town's largest bookstore.
"I fell on my knees to hug him."—Page 25.