"So Rick's found a dog after all; has he?" spoke Mr. Dalton, as he got ready to go to work. "Well! Well! He isn't such a bad dog, either."
"No, he seems right nice," spoke Mrs. Dalton. "But he must belong to someone."
"He belongs to me!" declared Rick. "I don't need Henry Blake's dog now; I got one of my own!"
The kitchen door was open. The sun was shining warmer now on the back steps, and Ruddy wanted to lie down in that patch of yellow light, and bask in the glow after his meal. Rick followed his new pet outside.
Sig Bailey, the coast guard, was just coming off duty, and going past the house on his way to home and breakfast. He looked in the yard and saw Rick patting Ruddy.
"Hello there!" called Sig. "Where'd you get my dog, Rick?"
"Your dog?" cried the boy, and his heart seemed to stop beating for a second. "Is—is this your dog?"
CHAPTER IV
RUDDY'S FIRST HUNT
Anxiously Rick waited for an answer from the coast guard. Ruddy who was standing beside the boy, cocked up his ears and sniffed the air that was blowing from the man toward that sensitive animal nose. Once Ruddy (or any dog, for that matter) had smelled a person, he never forgot. Years afterward Ruddy would remember that person's smell, and know whether he was a friend or enemy. And Ruddy knew he had smelled this man before.
With the remembrance was both pleasure and something of pain. The pleasure was in the joyous memory of the bit of bread and meat the coast guard had given the dog. The pain came when Ruddy recalled how he was driven away—or at least he thought he was. But we know that the coast guard was only telling the puppy to shelter himself from the storm.