“Whenever I begin to hope, I hear that walrus guffaw.” Ky’s master was listening with all his shrinking soul, and his eyes looked straight through the wall, but he spoke as quietly as before. Hildegarde shivered a little. Death itself could hardly remove him further than he had wandered in those few seconds. “Oh, come back!” she said in her heart, and then aloud, “Tell me, please tell me, how I shall manage about Ky?”
“Ky?” His eyelids fluttered as he obeyed the call.
“Yes, how am I to make her follow me?”
“Give her more of your pilot bread.”
“Will she leave you at the last for that?”
“She won’t know it’s the last, and she is hungry. Aren’t you, Ky?”
Hildegarde laid down the knife an instant, took a fragment from her pocket and held it out to the dog.
Very doubtfully Ky came nearer. But still she couldn’t make up her mind to trust the new friend’s hand. So Hildegarde laid the coveted morsel down.
When Ky had cautiously snapped it up, she hobbled to the bedside and turned her dim eyes to the old familiar bundle.
“Yes, I’ve got it safe.” He circled it with an arm, still looking down at the dog.