Of the life-preserving qualities Scamp possessed a large share, as doubtless before this his story proves.
Perhaps his cur mother had put him up to a wrinkle or two in his babyhood; at any rate, fully determined was he to meet no violent end, to live out his appointed time, and very clever were the expedients he used to promote this worthy object.
Now he shook himself as free as he could of the encumbrances he had met with in the smoky, sooty chimney, and again approached Flo’s side.
She laid her hand on his head, praised him a little for the talent he had shown in again escaping from Maxey, and the dreadful fate to which Maxey meant to consign him; then the two lay quiet and silent.
A child and a dog!
Could any one have looked in on them that night they would have said that in all the great city no two could be more utterly alone and forsaken.
That individual, whoever he might have been, would have gone away with a wrong impression—they were not so.
Any creature that retains hope, any creature that retains faith, which is better, than hope, cannot be really desolate.
The dog had all the large, though unconscious faith of his kind in his Creator. It had never occurred to him to murmur at his fate, to wish for himself the better and more silken lives that some dogs live. To live at all was a blessed thing, to love at all a more blessed thing—he lived and he loved—he was perfectly happy.
And the child—for the first time she knew of and had faith in a Divine Father, she had heard of some one who loved her, and who would make all things right for her. She thought of this love, she pondered over it, she was neither desolate nor unhappy. God and God’s Son loved her, and loved Dick—they knew all about her and Dick; and some day their Father would send for them both and give them a home in His House in Heaven.