Sir James, with a pipe in his mouth,—this latter fact Clarissa hails with rapture,—is also bending anxiously over the dog, and is so absorbed in his contemplation of it as not to notice Clarissa's approach until she is close beside him.
"What is the matter with the poor little thing?" she asks, earnestly, gazing with deep pity at the poor puppy, that whines dismally and glances up at her with the peculiarly tearful appealing expression that belongs to setters.
"A knock of a stone, miss, nayther more nor less," exclaims the man, angrily. "That's the honest truth, Sir James, you take my word for't. Some o' them rascally boys as is ever and allus about this 'ere yard, and spends their lives shyin' stones at every blessed sign they sets their two eyes on, has done this. 'Ere's one o' the best pups o' the season a'most ruined, and no satisfaction for it. It's a meracle if he comes round (quiet there, my beauty, and easy there now, I tell ye), and nobody does anything."
The old man stops, and regards his master reprovingly, nay, almost contemptuously.
"I really don't see why you should think it was the boys, Joe?" says Sir James, meekly.
"'Twarn't anythin' else, anyway," persists Joe, doggedly.
"Poor little fellow!—dear fellow!" murmurs Miss Peyton, caressingly, to the great soft setter pup, patting its head lovingly, as it barks madly, and makes frantic efforts to get from Joe's arms to hers, while Bill shrieks in concert, being filled with an overwhelming amount of sympathy.
"Better leave him to me, miss," says Joe, regarding the injured innocent with a parent's eye. "He knows me. I'll treat him proper," raising his old honest weather-beaten face to Clarissa, in a solemn reassuring manner, "you be bound. Yet them pups" (disgustedly) "is like children, allus ungrateful. For the sake o' your handsome face, now, he'd go to you if he could, forgetful of all my kindness to him. Well, 'tis the way o' the world, I believe," winds up old Joe, rising from his knees,—cheered, perhaps, by the thought that his favorite pup, if only following the common dictates of animals, is no worse than all others.
He grumbles something else in an undertone, and finally carries off the puppy to his kennel.
"I am too amazed for speech," says Sir James, rising also to his feet, and contemplating Clarissa with admiration. "That man," pointing to Joe's retiring figure, "has been in my father's service, and in mine, for fifty years, and never before did I hear a civil word from his lips. I think he said your face was handsome, just now?—or was I deceived?"