"Tray, what a singularly good listener you are—and therefore what singularly good manners you've got! I suppose all dogs have!" said Little Billee; and then, in a very tender voice, he exclaimed,
"Alice, Alice, Alice!"
And Tray uttered a soft, cooing, nasal croon in his head register, though he was a barytone dog by nature, with portentous, warlike chest-notes of the jingo order.
"Tray, your mistress is a parson's daughter, and therefore twice as much of a mystery as any other woman in this puzzling world!
"Tray, if my heart weren't stopped with wax, like the ears of the companions of Ulysses when they rowed past the sirens—you've heard of Ulysses, Tray? he loved a dog—if my heart weren't stopped with wax, I should be deeply in love with your mistress; perhaps she would marry me if I asked her—there's no accounting for tastes!—and I know enough of myself to know that I should make her a good husband—that I should make her happy—and I should make two other women happy besides.
"As for myself personally, Tray, it doesn't very much matter. One good woman would do as well as another, if she's equally good-looking. You doubt it? Wait till you get a pimple inside your bump of—your bump of—wherever you keep your fondnesses, Tray.
"For that's what's the matter with me—a pimple—just a little clot of blood at the root of a nerve, and no bigger than a pin's point!
"That's a small thing to cause such a lot of wretchedness, and wreck a fellow's life, isn't it? Oh, curse it, curse it, curse it—every day and all day long!
"And just as small a thing will take it away, I'm told!
"Ah! grains of sand are small things—and so are diamonds! But diamond or grain of sand, only Alice has got that small thing! Alice alone, in all the world, has got the healing touch for me now; the hands, the lips, the eyes! I know it—I feel it! I dreamed it last night! She looked me well in the face, and took my hand—both hands—and kissed me, eyes and mouth, and told me how she loved me. Ah! what a dream it was! And my little clot melted away like a snow-flake on the lips, and I was my old self again, after many years—and all through that kiss of a pure woman.