"Oh, he'll go fast enough. Dinah is here, and he will think it safe to leave me."
Bruno was delighted at the invitation, and went tearing around the square four times while Julius walked it once; then came in, hot and happy, to tell Catsie and me all about it.
There was something so peculiarly tender about our feelings for Bruno and his for us. He was at once our protector and our dependent. It is not strange that we never failed to be thoroughly enraged when dog-lovers tried, as they sometimes did, to coax us to sell him. Sell our Bruno! True, we had tried to give him away, but that was for his own good. But to take money for him! To sell him!! Unspeakable!!!
Three times we had nursed him through trying illnesses,—twice the blind staggers, and once the distemper; and when either of us was ill, he could not be coaxed from the bedside. No matter who watched at night, Bruno would watch too, and no slightest sound nor movement escaped his vigilance.
How often since he left us have I longed in weary vigils for the comfort of his presence!
CHAPTER XVII
In looking back at that winter, most of its evenings seem to have been spent before the open fire, the room lighted only by its blaze.
Sometimes Little Blossom lay across my knees, the firelight mirrored in her thoughtful eyes, her pink toes curling and uncurling to the heat. Sometimes she lay cradled in Julius's arms, while he crooned old ditties remembered from his own childhood.