So he made his way to the “big bar’l,” hoping no one had been there before him, and, leaning over without looking, put his cold, red hand into the ashes, but he drew it out again in a hurry, for, cold as it was, it had touched something colder.
“Hello!” cried Carl, “what’s that? It don’t feel ’zactly like the bar of gold,” and, dropping on his knees, he peeped in.
A dirty little, shaggy, once-white dog raised a pair of soft, dark, wistful eyes to his face.
“Why! I’m blessed,” said Carl, in great surprise, “if it ain’t a dog. Poor little beggar! that was his nose I felt, an’ wasn’t it cold?”
“I s’pose he’s got in among the ashes to keep warm; wot pooty eyes he’s got, just like that woman’s wot give me a ten cent stamp for the Tribune the other day, and wouldn’t take no change. Poor old feller! Are you lost?”
The dog had risen to its feet, and still looking pleadingly at Carl, commenced wagging its tail in a friendly manner.
“Oh! you want me to take you home,” continued Carl. “I can’t ’cause I dunno where you live, and my family eats all they can git theirselves—they’re awful pigs, they are,” and he laughed softly, “an’ couldn’t board a dog nohow.”
But the dog kept on wagging his tail, and as soon as Carl ceased speaking, as though grateful for even a few kind words, it licked the cold hand that rested on the side of the barrel.
That dog—kiss won the poor boy’s heart completely. “You shall go with me,” he cried impulsively. “Jest come out of that barrel till I fill this pail with cinders, and then we’ll be off. He kin have the bones we can’t crack with our teeth ennyhow,” he said to himself,—not a very cheerful prospect, it must be confessed, for the boarder.
The dog, as though he understood every word, jumped from the box, and seated himself on the icy pavement to wait for his new landlord and master.