“That will do, child, that will do. You must let older people think for you, if you please. Be silent.”
Lady Barmouth sailed out of the room, and with a flush upon her countenance Maude returned to her work-basket for the silk, starting as she did so, for something touched her, and there was Joby’s great head with the prominent eyes staring up at her, as if to say, “Are you ready?”
Folding her note very small, she tied it securely to the inside of the dog’s collar, and then, laying her hands upon his ears, kissed his great ugly forehead.
“There, good dog, take that to your master,” she said. “Go home.”
The dog started up, uttered a low bark, and, as if he understood her words, made for the door.
“No, no,” cried Maude, who repented now that she had gone so far; “come back, good dog, come back. What will he think of me? What shall I do!”
She ran to the door, but the dog had disappeared, and to her horror she heard the front door open as the carriage wheels stopped at the door. Trembling with dread she ran to the window and saw that the carriage was waiting for Lady Barmouth; but what interested her far more was the sight of Joby trotting across the wide thoroughfare, and evidently making his way straight off home, where he arrived in due course, and set to scratching at the door till Charley Melton got up impatiently and let him in.
“Ah, Joby,” he said, carelessly; and then, heedless of the dog—“But I’ll never give her up,” he said sharply, as he rose and took an old pipe from the chimney-piece, which he filled and then sat down.
As he did so, according to custom, Joby laid his head in his master’s hand, Melton pulling the dog’s ears, and patting him with one hand, thinking of something else the while. His thoughts did not come back, even when his hand came in contact with the paper which now came off easily at his touch.
Melton’s thoughts were with the writer, and he had a pipe in the other hand; but his brain suggested to him that he might just as well light the pipe, incited probably thereto by the touch of the paper which he began to open out, after putting his meerschaum in his mouth; and he was then dreamily doubling the note, when his eyes fell upon the characters, his pipe dropped from his lips and broke upon the floor, as he read with increasing excitement—