"All right, Moxon," said I. "I'm quite aware of all this. Can you be ready to catch the night train to Fishguard?"
He did not answer. He just bent his head and left the room.
Perhaps it was for ten minutes that I leant on the mantelpiece staring down into the fire. At last I stood up. It was no good. My mind was made up. I stamped the letter to Bellwattle and went out to find Dandy.
He was there in the hall, where Moxon gives the illusion of life to his biscuits, and Moxon was bending over him, saying something. I did not hear a word he said, and at my approach, he got up quickly and walked away, but something I saw made me hesitate more than I had hesitated for the past three weeks. There were tears in his eyes.
"Are you going to blame me?" said I to Dandy—then I picked him up in my arms and carried him into my room. There I told him everything. I reminded him of that first morning in Ballysheen, how readily he had gone out with Bellwattle for a walk, never missing me at all. I brought back to his mind those little white jerky behinds of the rabbits which, when they move, so excite all his proclivities for sport.
"You get none of that sort of thing here," said I.
I tried at last to read him a lecture on the psychology of dogs, explaining how a kind master or mistress and all the stretch of an open country will soon ease their minds of all regret.
"And you know how kind Bellwattle is," I added.
"You remember how she kissed you when you went away. But I suppose you're accustomed to that sort of thing from ladies. It's the rabbits you're less likely to forget."
"I knew a dog," said he, "who died of loneliness when his master left him."