Her gratitude had the effect of inclining Mr Musgrave towards a greater kindliness; but, since he had undertaken to perform the sole service that presented itself as practicable, he could bethink him of nothing kinder, and so modestly deprecated her thanks.
“If Diogenes had been shot,” she said, and shivered, “it would have made me very unhappy. I’m unhappy enough as it is. I hate the thought of losing him. I can’t bear to think of never seeing him in the future.”
To hide the sudden rush of tears which she realised would be as embarrassing for John Musgrave to witness as for her to shed before him, she dropped on her knees in the straw and drew Diogenes to her and put her arms about his neck.
“Oh, Diogenes, my poor dear?” she sobbed. “Why ever did you do it? I’ve got to let you go, Diogenes. I shan’t see you any more, ever. We’ll never go for walks together again. If I’d only been with him,” she said, lifting to John Musgrave her tear-dimmed eyes, “it wouldn’t have happened.”
John Musgrave, with the scene of his wrecked china, and Diogenes standing triumphant amid the wreckage, with Peggy, dismayed and helpless, beside him, had a passing doubt whether her presence would have availed in preventing the tragedy. But, with those upturned, tear-filled eyes appealing for his sympathy, to remind her that her authority was sometimes in default was a brutality of which he was incapable.
“I am exceedingly sorry,” he said gently, “for your distress. I wish I could help you.”
“But you are helping me,” she cried. “You have taken such a load off my mind. I daresay in time I’ll get used to being without him. But he was such a—chum.”
As she knelt almost at his feet, with her arms about the ugly brute from which she was so loth to separate, she presented a picture at once so appealing and pathetic that Mr Musgrave found himself struggling with all manner of absurd impulses in his very earnest and not unnatural desire to see her grief change to gladness, and the tears melt away in smiles. He had the same feeling of uncomfortable distress in witnessing her trouble as he experienced over the lesser but more assertive troubles of John Sommers. Her tears hurt him.
“I suppose,” he said, with a certain halting indecision of manner, “we couldn’t, perhaps, find a home for him somewhere not too far away—somewhere, in fact, near enough for you to see him occasionally? I wonder... Perhaps that might be managed.”
Peggy brightened visibly and looked up at him with such a light of hope in her eyes that Mr Musgrave, from thinking that this might be managed, finally decided that it must be managed; that he, in short, must manage it. This resolve once firmly established in his mind, his thoughts busied themselves with ways and means for the safe and convenient disposal of Diogenes. But the only way which presented itself was so disturbing to Mr Musgrave that, after first considering it, he paused to reflect, and looking upon Diogenes, and having very clearly in mind the great personal inconvenience that would result from such a course, he promptly rejected it. Having rejected it, finally, as he believed, he paused again for reflection; and looking this time not upon Diogenes but straight into those clear, hopeful eyes, which seemed to look to him with such a perfect confidence in his ability to solve this difficulty that to disappoint her expectation seemed cruel after having raised her hopes, Mr Musgrave felt it imperative on him to reconsider the matter. After a somewhat protracted silence, he said: “Do you think it would be possible for me to keep him?”