My doggie broke from my grasp with a shriek of joy, and sprang into her arms. She buried her face in his shaggy neck and absolutely hugged him.
I stood aghast. The footman smiled in an imbecile manner.
“You’d better not squeeze quite so hard, miss, or he’ll bust!” remarked the waif.
Recovering herself, and dropping the dog somewhat hurriedly, she turned to me with a flushed face and said—
“Excuse me, sir; this unexpected meeting with my dog—”
“Your dog!” I involuntarily exclaimed, while a sense of unmerited loss began to creep over me.
“Well, the dog was mine once, at all events—though I doubt not it is rightfully yours now,” said the young lady, with a smile that at once disarmed me. “It was stolen from me a few months after I had bought it from this boy, who seems strangely altered since then. I’m glad, however, to see that the short time I had the dog was sufficient to prevent its forgetting me. But perhaps,” she added, in a sad tone, “it would have been better if it had forgotten me.”
My mind was made up.
“No, madam,” said I, with decision; “it is well that the dog has not forgotten you. I would have been surprised, indeed, if it had. It is yours. I could not think of robbing you of it. I—I—am going to visit a sick woman and cannot delay; forgive me if I ask permission to leave the dog with you until I return in the afternoon to hand it formally over and bid it farewell.”
This was said half in jest yet I felt very much in earnest, for the thought of parting from my doggie, even to such a fair mistress, cost me no small amount of pain—much to my surprise, for I had not imagined it possible that I could have formed so strong an attachment to a dumb animal in so short a time. But, you see, being a bachelor of an unsocial spirit, my doggie and I had been thrown much together in the evenings, and had made the most of our time.