"Wait a minute," he said, turning on his heel. He went back to the room where the child lay among the white pillows, with her hand upon the empty gray satin cushion. Absently she stroked one of the red puppies whose gold eyes gazed forever at the saucer of green milk. She lay with her lashes on her cheeks. It was the first day that she had not watched the street. Her mother, sitting back at the door, was fanning her.
"Adah!" said the doctor cheerily. "We've got something good to tell you. Your father has found—there, there, my child!—yes, your father has found him. He looks a little queer and homesick—guess he's missed you some—and you mustn't mind how he looks, for—you see, Adah, we think he has lived with a—with a barber, and got shaved for nothing!" added the doctor stoutly.
The doctor had told his share of professional fibs in his day, like the most of his race; but I hope he was forgiven all the others for this one's merciful and beautiful sake.
"Come, professor!" he called, courageously enough. But his own heart beat as hard as the father's and the mother's, when the professor slowly mounted the stairs with the basket bed and the exhausted dog within it.
"Love-li-ness!" cried the child. It was the first loud word that she had spoken for months.
Then they lifted the dog and put him in her arms; and they turned away their faces, for the sight of that reunion was all the nerve could bear.
So it was as it has been, and ever will be, since the beginning to the end of time. Joy, the Angel of Delight and Danger, the most precious and the most perilous of messengers to the heart that loves, came to our two little friends, and might have destroyed, but saved instead.
The child was strong before the dog was; but both convalesced rapidly and sweetly enough. In a week Adah threw away her little crutch. Her lost voice returned, to stay. The pearl and the rose of her soft, invalid skin browned with the summer sun. Peals of laughter and ecstatic barks resounded through the happy house. Little feet and little paws trotted together across the dew-touched lawn. Wonderful neck ribbons,—a new color every day,—tied by eager, small fingers upon the silver-gray throat of the Yorkshire, flashed through the bending shrubbery in pursuit of a little glancing white figure in lawn dresses, with shade hat hanging down her back. The satin cushion with the embroidered puppies was carried out among the blushing weigelia bushes; and the twain lived and loved and played, from day-start to twilight, in the live, midsummer air.
