“What, Gelert,” whispered Fritz again, in spite of her admonition,—“dear old fellow!”
He had hardly uttered these words, when the faithful dog, who must have been close beside the bed, raised himself up, putting a paw on one of Fritz’s arms which lay outside the coverings and licking his hand, whining rapturously the while, as if rejoiced to hear the voice of his master again.
“‘Gelert!’” exclaimed the girl with some surprise. “Why, I know the dog perfectly, and he recognises me quite well; but he is called ‘Fritz,’ not ‘Gelert,’ as you said.”
“‘Fritz!’” ejaculated he, in his turn. “Why, that is my name!”
“Gracious me,” thought the girl to herself, “he is rambling again, and confusing his own name with that of the dog! I must put a stop to his speaking, or else he will get worse. Here, take this,” she said aloud, lifting to his lips a wineglass containing a composing draught which the doctor had left for her patient to take as soon as he showed any signs of recovery from his swoon, and which she really ought to have given him before; “it will do you good, and make you stronger.”
Fritz swallowed the potion unhesitatingly, immediately sinking back on his pillow in a quiet sleep; when the girl, sitting down by the side of the bed, watched the long-drawn, quivering respirations that came from the white, parted lips of the wounded man.
“Poor young fellow!” she said with a sigh; “I fear he will never get over it. I wonder where Armand is now, and how came this stranger to have possession of his dog! The funniest thing, too, is that ‘Fritz’ seems as much attached to this new master as he was to Armand, although he has not forgotten me. Have you, ‘Fritz,’ my beauty, eh?”
The retriever, in response, gave three impressive thumps with his bushy tail on the floor, as he lay at the girl’s feet by the side of the bed. He evidently answered to this other familiar appellation quite as readily as he had done to that of “Gelert,” being apparently on perfect terms of friendship, not to say intimacy, with the young lady who had just asked him so pertinent a question.
He certainly had not forgotten her. He would not have been a gallant dog if he had; nor would he have displayed that taste and wise discrimination which one would naturally have expected to find, in a well-bred dog of his particular class, for his interlocutor was a remarkably pretty girl—possessing the most lovely golden-hued hair and a pair of blue eyes that were almost turquoise in tint, albeit with a somewhat wistful, faraway look in them, especially now when she gazed down into the brown, honest orbs of the retriever, who was watching her every moment with faithful attention. She had, too, an unmistakeable air of refinement and culture, in spite of her being attired in a plainly made black stuff dress such as a servant might have worn, and having a sort of cap like those affected by nuns and sisters of charity drawn over her dainty little head, partly concealing its wealth of fair silky hair. No one would have dreamt of taking her to be anything else but a lady, no matter what costume she adopted, or how she was disguised.
“Who ever thought, dear doggie,” she continued, speaking the thoughts that surged up in her mind while addressing the dumb animal, who looked as if he would like to understand her if he only could,—“who ever would have thought that things would turn out as they have when I last patted your dear old head at Bingen, ‘Fair Bingen on the Rhine,’ eh?” and she murmured to herself the refrain of that beautiful ballad.