Advancing stiffly towards us and wagging his scrap of a tail was a small grey-brown dog. His coat was plastered with filth, upon one of his ears was a blotch of dried blood, his muzzle and paws might have been steeped in liquid soot. He stank abominably.
I put up a hand to my head.
"Nobby?" I cried, peering. And then again, "Nobby?"
The urchin crept to my feet, put his small dirty head on one side, lowered it to the ground, and then rolled over upon his back. With his legs in the air, he regarded me fixedly, tentatively wagging his tail.
Dazedly I stooped and patted the mud upon his stomach….
The bright eyes flashed. Then, with a squirm, the Sealyham was on his feet and leaping to lick my face.
"B-b-but," shrieked Susan, shaking me by the arm, "is this the—the dog you'd lost?"
"Yes," I shouted, "it is!"
Not until then did the custodian of the apartments find his tongue.
"It is your dog, then!" he raved. "He has marched with us all the time, and I have not seen him. Without an attachment in all these noble rooms! Mon Dieu! dogs may not enter even the grounds, but he must junket in the Château, all vile as he is and smelling like twenty goats."