ONLY A DOG.
"It is only a dog!" the passengers on the steamer exclaimed, some with a sigh of relief, for at first it was rumoured it was a child.
"Only a dog!" and Canon Percival said that to stop the steamer and lower a boat was out of the question. They were much behind as it was, and there would be barely time to catch the train to Paris.
There was no sign of Nino, and the surging waters had closed over him. Poor Nino! Two or three fishing smacks were in sight, and almost within speaking distance, but there was no hope of saving him.
"Only a dog!" but the heart of his little mistress felt as if it would break. She rushed down into the cabin, and with a wild cry of distress threw herself into her mother's arms.
"Nino! my Nino is drowned. Oh, Nino! Nino!"
Poor Ingleby roused herself from her sickness to comfort her darling.
"Oh! Miss Dorothy, perhaps it is all for the best; he would have been unhappy, and in the way, and——"
But Dorothy refused comfort; and by the time they were in the train, which there was a great rush to catch at Boulogne, Dorothy was exhausted with crying, and was only too glad to be tucked up on a seat near her mother, and soothed to sleep and forgetfulness of her trouble.
Irene felt very sorry for Dorothy, but she had never had a home and pets, either dogs or cats; and she could not therefore enter into the extent of Dorothy's grief. Having offered all the consolation in her power, which had been repulsed, Irene resigned herself to a book that Ingleby had given her out of her well-stocked basket, and before long she, too, was asleep.