“No; I’d a better reason than that,” returned Walter, with a look of unusual sagacity.
“Well, then, you must tell me what it was, for I can’t guess,” observed Annie good-naturedly.
“Look again, and find out,” rejoined Walter.
Thus urged, Annie examined the dog more attentively than she had done before, and discovered that round his neck was slung the identical gold watch and chain which, at her suggestion, Charles Leicester and his wife had given to Lewis.
“Why, you’ve hung Mr. Arundel’s watch round Faust’s neck! Oh, Walter, how foolish of you; he might have thrown it down and broken it!” exclaimed Annie, aghast at her discovery.
“Yes, that’s it,” returned Walter, chuckling with delight at the success of his puerile attempt at a trick. “All gentlemen wear gold watches, you know, and so does Mr. Faust.”
“You ought not to have put it on him; I’m sure Mr. Arundel will be very angry,” resumed Annie; and kneeling down by the dog, she began untwisting the chain from his neck. “Sit still, Faust; be quiet, sir,” she continued, as Faust, in his affection, attempted to take an unfair advantage of the situation to lick her hands and face, in which act of impertinence Walter sedulously encouraged him; still Annie persevered, and at length succeeded in disengaging the chain and rescuing the watch from its dangerous position. “There,” she exclaimed, “I have remedied the effects of your mischief, Master Walter; but I should never have been able to accomplish it if Faust had not been the best behaved, dearest old dog in the world;” and with an impulse of girlish playfulness she threw her arms round the animal and pressed his rough head against her shoulder, her soft auburn ringlets falling like a shower of gold upon his shaggy coat.
At this moment, Lewis, who had been to talk over his Saturday evening’s adventures with Frere (or, at least, such portion of them as he chose to reveal, for on some subjects he was strangely reserved, even with Frere), returned, and finding the door ajar, entered noiselessly, and stood transfixed by the sight of the tableau vivant we have endeavoured to describe. He thought that he had never beheld anything so lovely in his life before, nor was he far wrong. The time that had elapsed since we first introduced Annie Grant to the reader had altered only to improve her beauty; her figure had gained a certain roundness of outline, and her face acquired a depth of expression, which had been the only finishing touches wanting to complete one of those rare specimens of loveliness on which we gaze with a speculative wonder as to why so much beauty should be, as it were, wasted on this world of change, and sin, and sorrow, and not reserved for that “Petter Land,”
“Where all lovely things and fair
Pass not away.”