“Must have cost thousands and thousands,” I observed.
Sir Walter, who did not think it good manners to mention prices of things, and yet who felt it incumbent on him to say something, murmured merely, “The new man is princely in his generosity.”
“Where’s Gringo?” I inquired anxiously.
“Never leaves his master—look behind Mr. Bonstone’s patent leather shoes.”
Sure enough, there was old Gringo, resplendent in a new collar which seemed to worry his neck, and panting happily beside a big fire. He looked like a big, ugly, brindled splotch on the white velvet hearth rug, but attractive, so very attractive, and just brimful of originality. He wasn’t going to turn into a conventional dog, just because he had come to live on Riverside Drive.
He pricked his rose ears when he saw me, and scuffed over to nose, or rather to lip me a welcome, for his old nose had such a lay-back that it wasn’t the use to him that mine was, for example. Mr. Bonstone and his wife didn’t pay any attention to us. They were staring at each other, as if they were at some kind of new and agreeable entertainment. However, the man’s keen glance soon fell on us.
“Dog-show?” he asked agreeably. “I heard there was one going on.”
Mrs. Bonstone laughed in a healthy, happy way, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Something about us—we three dogs standing in the middle of the room, politely greeting each other, seemed to excite her risibles, till she almost lost control of herself. Or was there something back of us in her mind? I guessed the latter by the way she looked at her husband when she caught his arm and said, “Norman, let’s go in to dinner.”
The butler, who stood in the doorway, was just announcing this, the most agreeable time of the day. He was a new man, and gave me a frightful stare. I placed him as a dog-hater.