Fluff twisted and squirmed until he escaped from his master’s arms, for the embrace was much too close to please him, and as he capered and danced, begging to be taken back to the station Benny’s grief increased:
“I know you want to stay here, Fluffy; but how can I fix things? It’s going to be terrible hard on you to go where folks won’t want you in the house ’cause you’re a dog, an’ we can’t be together much of the time. Oh, what shall we do, you poor little man!”
Believing himself hidden from view of the life savers, the lad gave way to the grief in his heart, and, lying face downward upon the rocks, he allowed the tears to flow unchecked.
It was Sam Hardy who, missing Benny from the station, had come out fearing to find him in much such a frame of mind.
During two or three minutes the kindly-hearted surfman stood over him in silence, while Fluff remained near by wagging his tail as if asking what had gone wrong so suddenly, and then, bending over, Sam Hardy lifted the sorrowing boy in his arms.
“Look you, lad, it’s wrong to get all down to the heel in this fashion when a question comes up which is to be settled as nearly for your good as we can figger it out. A life-savin’ station ain’t the kind of a home which is needed by a boy of your age.”
“It’s the only kind I want!” Benny sobbed. “Fluffy an’ I’ll never find another so good!”
“That’s what you believe now, No. 8; but——”
“Why do you call me No. 8? If I’m to be sent away from here it shows I never was one of the crew!”
“But you have been, an’ always will be, Benny, lad. Even if you go away we shall never speak or think of you except as ‘No. 8,’ the gritty little mate who brought something like sunshine into the dull station, and kept the gleam there every minute he stayed with us.”