“—And feed him out of the tumbler too?”
“He’s had nothing to-day, ma’am, and we’re comrades!”
“But it’s not clean of you!”
“Ah, you don’t know dogs, ma’am! His tongue is clean—as clean as anybody’s.”
Abdiel took three or four little laps of the milk, drew away, and looked up at his master—as much as to say, “You, now!”
“Besides,” Clare went on, “he couldn’t get at it so well in the bottom of the tumbler.”
With that he raised it to his own lips, drank eagerly, and set it on the road half empty, looking his thanks to the giver with a smile she thought heavenly. Then he broke the bread, and giving the dog nearly the half of it, began to eat the rest himself. The old lady stood looking on in silence, pondering what she was to do with the celestial beggar.
“Would you mind sleeping in the greenhouse, if I had a bed put up for you?” she said at length, in tone apologetic.
“This is a better place—though I wish it was warmer!” said Clare, with another smile as he looked up at the sky, in which a few stars were beginning to twinkle, and thought of the gardeners he had met. “—Don’t you think it better, ma’am?”
“No, indeed, I don’t!” she answered crossly; for to her the open air at night seemed wrong, disreputable. There was something unholy in it!