Dr. Howe was reading, with an indignant exclamation occasionally, a scathing review of an action of his political candidate, and his big newspaper hid the two young people by the fire, so that he quite forgot them. Max seemed to feel that the responsibility of propriety rested upon him, and he sat with his head on Lois's knee, and his drowsy eyes blinking at Mr. Forsythe. His mistress pulled his silky ears gently, or knotted them behind his head, giving him a curiously astonished and grieved look, as though he felt she trifled with his dignity; yet he did not move his head, but watched, with no affection in his soft brown eyes, the young man who talked so eagerly to Lois.
"That brute hates me," said Mr. Forsythe, "and yet I took the trouble to bring him a biscuit to-day. Talk of gratitude and affection in animals. They don't know what it means!"
"Max loves me," Lois answered, taking the setter's head between her hands.
"Ah, well, that's different," cried Forsythe; "of course he does. I'd like to know how he could help it. He wouldn't be fit to live, if he didn't."
Lois raised the hand-screen she held, so that Dick could only see the curls about her forehead and one small curve of her ear. "How hot the fire is!" she said.
Dr. Howe folded his newspaper with much crackling and widely opened arms. "Don't sit so near it. In my young days, the children were never allowed to come any nearer the fireplace than the outside of the hearth-rug." Then he began to read again, muttering, "Confound that reporter!"
Dick glanced at him, and then he said, in a low voice, "Max loves you because you are so kind to him, Miss Lois; it is worth while to be a dog to have you"—
"Give him bones?" Lois cried hurriedly. "Yes, it is too hot in here, father; don't you think so; don't you want me to open the window?"
Dr. Howe looked up, surprised. "If you want to, child," he said. "Dear me, I'm afraid I have not been very entertaining, Mr. Forsythe. What do you think of this attack on our candidate? Contemptible, isn't it? What? I have no respect for any one who can think it anything but abominable and outrageous."
"It's scandalous!" Dick answered,—and then in a smiling whisper to Lois, he added, "I'm afraid to tell the doctor I'm a Democrat."