“Where is Don, mother?”
Mother put her arm around you, and laid her lips to your forehead; and even before she spoke you felt what was coming.
“Johnny dear, you never will see Don any more,” she said; and she held you close while you sobbed out your first real grief upon her breast.
When you could listen she told you all—how they had found him, lifeless, where he had crawled under the porch; how they had buried him, decently and tenderly, where you might see his grave and put up a headboard; how they had kept the news from you, so that your visit should not be spoiled; and how, all the way from the depot, her heart had ached for you.
Thus the dog vanished from your daily life, and for weeks the house and yard seemed very strange without him. Then, gradually, the feeling that you were to come upon him unexpectedly around some corner wore off. You grew reconciled.
But to this day you are constantly encountering him in dreamland. He hasn’t changed, and in his sight apparently you haven’t changed. You are once more boy and dog together. This leads you to hope and to trust—indeed, to believe—that, notwithstanding your mother’s gentle admonition, you will see him again, in fact as well as fancy, after all.
IN THE ARENA