“In life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend;
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own;
Who labors, fights, lives, breathes for him alone!”
“I’ll have a dog, or nothing,” he concluded.
“He has his father’s will,” sighed his mother, as he left the room.
A few weeks later Billy was rambling home. He had been sent with a dish to an invalid; and between the fear of spilling its contents and the attention he must pay to his steps had had a wretched time; so on the way home he was thoroughly enjoying liberty. Hands were free to shy stones at balky and rickety horses, and feet were free to roam and linger where they listed. He was a long time on that homeward journey, and only reached the graveyard at half-past four.
Billy had been known to quicken his footsteps when passing the graveyard by moonlight; and it is said that once when the sky was dark above and the night dark beneath, he ran quite around the corner, where he sauntered and whistled indifferently. But there was no occasion for running to-day. Neither moonlight nor darkness brooded over the graves; the white stones were dazzling in the sunshine, and the blades of grass twinkled like so many little stars; birds hopped fearlessly over the graves, not changing their gay tunes nor lowering their loud voices out of respect to the place; and altogether the graveyard looked so cheery and tempting in the afternoon sunshine that Billy stepped over the stile.
There was a general scattering of birds, butterflies, chipmunks and squirrels, each of these inferior creatures being warned by a voice in its little breast to flee. A noble dog would have needed no such warning, but would have approached Billy as an equal, assured of the reception to which his rank entitled him.
Having sole possession of the premises, Billy strolled about with a sovereign air. He pulled off his cap and turned up his face, letting the sunshine warm his cheeks to red and his yellow hair to gold. He surveyed the sky with some interest, as there was quite a variety of colors to-day, which pleased him better than the ordinary white and blue that in his opinion too much resembled milk and water. He cut a willow stick for a whistle, and examined names and dates as he passed the tombstones. Arriving at the grave of a boy who had died at his age, he sat down, took out his knife, and as he worked whistled cheerily above the little fellow whose whistling days were over. By and by an occasional chipmunk or squirrel ventured out in search of nuts; and at last a reckless kitten came within throwing distance. It would have been sad for the kitten had the soil been sterile and stony; but in that grassy region there was nothing to throw except the knife and the stick in the boy’s hands. The knife could by no means be spared, so away went the whistle with the coward cat before it. As the whistle was not to be found after a hunt in the thick grass, Billy resumed his rambles.