I caught Father O’Shan’s eyes fixed on me ruminatingly from time to time during the evening. Once or twice, meeting my eyes, he favored me with his rare, heart-warming smile. When I said good night to him in the village, leaning from the saddle and shifting Joey’s sleeping figure somewhat, in order that I might offer him my hand, he pressed close to my horse’s side and peered up at me with friendly glance through the semi-darkness of the dimly lighted street.
“Too bad, Dale—too bad,” he said in his winning tones.
“Eh? Just what is too bad?” I asked.
He gripped my hand.
“Man, I’m sorry I did not know you in the darkest days—when the dog was understanding. I’d have tried to be understanding, too. A pity, Dale—a pity!”
“Never mind!”
“I shall pass through this world but once, you know—I don’t want to leave more things undone than I have to. But the unguessed things—that lurk quite obscure—they have a way of unearthing themselves—they hurt, Dale! Why, my boy, I rode past your cabin when you were putting the roof on! But I was busy. I did not stop. Oh, well—I’m glad you had your dog!”
CHAPTER XVIII
“THANK YOU, MR. FIXING MAN”
THE bathing and dressing of Joey on Sunday morning, with Sunday school in prospect, had always been an indeterminate process, a sort of blind bargain. But with each week that was added to his age it became not only precarious, but downright fagging, and nerve racking to a degree. When he was a wee urchin and could go into the wash tub in the kitchen for his weekly scouring, the process was comparatively simple, but now that his long legs precluded that possibility, a liberal soaping and sponge bath beside the tub was the alternative, and I found the operation decidedly ticklish.
He knew the minutiæ of the bath so well that if I neglected the least detail, or varied the prescribed form, I was called to severe account.