Fortunately Mrs. Waverlee was something beyond the ordinary run of women. When she came back from the hospital, pale, but strong and beautiful, she took my head between her two hands.
I never saw such a look in the eyes of a mortal person before. (You know we dogs sometimes see ghosts.) She was like a woman that had died, and come to life again. If there had been any nonsense about her, it was all purged away.
“Boy,” she said in her lovely English voice, “to commemorate your sagacity, I am going to give a year’s income to aid the various societies in New York that exist for the purpose of helping lost and starving animals.”
Oh! how this pleased me. The sufferings of animals affect me so strongly, that merely to think of them makes me miserable. I try in vain sometimes to forget the horrible sights I have seen, the dreadful sounds I have heard.
I wagged my tail, I licked her hands, I prostrated myself before this beautiful Englishwoman with the other-world look in her eyes. She could do nothing for me, but make other dogs happy, whose sufferings made me so unhappy.
I adored her, I worshipped her. There was something in her spirit that understood my dog spirit better, far better, than any other person in the world could comprehend me. What was it? I did not know. I merely understood that I reverenced her more than I reverenced my dear master, though of course I loved him more.
The Bonstones and my master and mistress were intensely interested in this lovely woman, for she affected them somewhat as she affected me. For a long time, after she came from the hospital, she and Egbert visited the Bonstones, and Gringo told me that every one in the household looked upon her with a kind of awe.
“She don’t care for things other women do,” said old Gringo with a mystified air, “and I hear her whispering to herself, ‘What shall I do with my life?’”
“Then she isn’t going back to England?” I said.
“No,” replied Gringo, “she grows quite cold and white, when any one asks her that. I think it’s because they’re still fighting over there, and she hates war.”