Jerry knelt beside him, stroked his head, talked baby-talk to him and let him take her wrist in his big mouth.
“I’m ashamed of myself, Count,” she purred; “I never went out to see you after all these weeks away. Poor old faithful doggie! did he think his muzzer had left him for good and keeps?”
At the kinder tones he crawled nearer and nearer and thumped his long tail joyously on the floor; then he leaped to his feet and tugged at her short skirt, saying plainly, “Come along home. I’m afraid you’ll get away again.”
“I’ll have to go,” Jerry shook her head. “My baby wants me. Look how he trembles. He just suffers when I’m away; and here I went and forgot all about him. You faithful old brute, you make me ashamed.”
She moved out towards the road.
“Are you coming up now, Richard, or do you want to stay longer and get acquainted with Phœbe?”
Richard was about to speak, but Phœbe forestalled him.
“Take him with you, Jerry,” she called. “I’m afraid to be left alone with the man. He has a greedy look. If he finds out, somehow, that I admire him, the Lord knows what he might be tempted to do to me—kiss my hand, probably. Oh, them innocent blue eyes!” she fell purposely into the colloquial grammar. “And by the holy cross of Saint Michael, if it isn’t blushin’ he is! Take him away! I’ll be liftin’ him into me lap and singin’ him sleepy songs if you leave him here!”
With much more chatter of the sort, broken into by replies in the same spirit, Phœbe drove them out.
She stood laughing in the doorway until road trees hid them; then her face relaxed into uncanny thoughtfulness. There she stood for some minutes gazing ahead at nothing at all, and twisting Seth Norris’ gold band around and around her wedding finger.