"Sugar! Guarda!" The Skye terrier sat upright on his haunches and lifted his paws. Francis gave him a preliminary admonition, took from a mysterious pocket a lump of sugar, laid it on the tip of the dog's nose, and holding up his finger, began in a slow and clearly measured tone:
"Buon soldato
Va alia guerra,
Mangia male,
Dorme in terra.
Uno, due--
Buon soldato
Va--"
But here Sugar, to Francis's horror, snapped the lump into his mouth and swallowed it.
"You lose," announced Kimberly.
Francis threw up his hands. "My poor boys!"
"This is the time, Francis, your poor boys don't get my money. I get your snuff."
"Ah, Sugar, Sugar! You ruin us." The little Skye sitting fast, looked innocently and affectionately up at his distressed master. "Why," demanded the crestfallen Francis, "could you not wait for the lump one little instant?"
"Sugar is like me," suggested Kimberly lazily, "he wants what he wants when he wants it."
Alice, this morning, had been deeply in his thoughts. From the moment he woke he had been toying indolently with her image--setting it up before his imagination as a picture, then putting it away, then tempting his lethargy again with the pleasure of recalling it.
He drew a cigar-case from his pocket and carefully emptied the snuff out of the box into it. "When do you get more snuff, Francis?"