We were just starting for home, when on the sidewalk there was a sudden flurry and dash, and Bruno, stomach to earth, was crawling about us, uttering yelps and whines that voiced a joy so great it could not be told from mortal agony.
Regardless of the fact that we were on the most public thoroughfare of the town, I fell on my knees to hug him, and could not keep back tears of mingled joy and pain. His poor thin sides! His gasps of rapture! Oh, Boonie, Boonie!
The first excitement over, we looked about us for Mr. Nimrod. He was nowhere to be seen. Bruno had evidently escaped, and was running away to look for us when he had chanced to strike our trail and so had found us.
We were glad he was alone. We both felt that if he had been torn from us at that supreme moment he would have died; he was so faint with fasting and grief, and then the overwhelming joy at finding those he had thought to be forever lost to him! He squeezed himself in between us, and kept step as we went homeward in the gathering twilight.
As soon as we reached home, we hurried him to the kitchen to enjoy the sight of the poor fellow at his trencher. How we fed him! I ransacked the pantry for the things he liked best, till his sides began to swell visibly. He paused between mouthfuls to feast his loving eyes on first one, then the other of us, and his tail never once stopped wagging. Rebecca came purring in to rub against his legs, and even submitted with shut eyes to a kiss from his big wet tongue. He must have felt that such an hour repaid him for all his sufferings.
After he had eaten until he evidently could not take another morsel, we drew him in front of us as we sat side by side, for a three-cornered talk. He sat on end, waving his tail to and fro on the floor, wrinkling his forehead and cocking up his ears, while we explained the situation to him.
We told him how kind Mr. Nimrod meant to be to him, how he would train him to hunt and take him on long daily runs. Then we reminded him how impossible it was for Julius to go on such excursions with him, and of how many scrapes he had got into by going alone,—he seeming to take it all in and to turn it over in his mind.
Then we told him that since he had found our new home he could come often to see us, and he would always find us glad to see him,—yes, more than glad!
Then Julius got his hat and said,—