"And where is Bobby?" inquired the young lady visitor.
Debby's joyous face clouded.
"Bobby is dead," she said softly. "He died four years ago, come next Shevuos."
"I'm so sorry," said Esther, pausing in her tea-drinking with a pang of genuine emotion. "At first I was afraid of him, but that was before I knew him."
"There never beat a kinder heart on God's earth," said Debby, emphatically. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."
Esther had often seen him snapping at flies, but she could not smile.
"I buried him secretly in the back yard," Debby confessed. "See! there, where the paving stone is loose."
Esther gratified her by looking through the little back window into the sloppy enclosure where washing hung. She noticed a cat sauntering quietly over the spot without any of the satisfaction it might have felt had it known it was walking over the grave of an hereditary enemy.
"So I don't feel as if he was far away," said Debby. "I can always look out and picture him squatting above the stone instead of beneath it."
"But didn't you get another?"