(He is the only man in Pont du Sable that I positively dislike.)
"Yes," I declared, "he gave me a dog. May I ask you what business it is of yours?"
A flash of sullen rage illumined for a moment the face of the cattle dealer. Then he muttered something in his peasant accent and sat glowering into his empty coffee cup as I turned and left the room, my mind reverting to Madame de Savignac's door which his coarse hand had closed with a vicious snap.
We took the short cut across the fields often now—my yellow puppy and I. Indeed I grew to see these good friends of mine almost daily, and as frequently as I could persuade them, they came to my house abandoned by the marsh.
The Peruvian gentleman's boarding house had been a failure, and I learned from the curé that the de Savignacs were hard pressed to pay their creditors.
It was Le Gros who held the mortgage, I further gleaned.
And yet those two dear people kept a brave heart. They were still giving what they had, and she kept him in ignorance as best she could, softening the helplessness of it all, with her gentleness and her courage.
In his vague realization that the end was near, there were days when he forced himself into a gay mood and would come chuckling down the lane to open the gate for me, followed by Mirza, the tawny old mother of my puppy, who kept her faithful brown eyes on his every movement. Often it was she who sprang nimbly ahead and unlatched the gate for me with her paw and muzzle, an old trick he had taught her, and he would laugh when she did it, and tell me there were no dogs nowadays like her.