“Quite wickedly well. I ought to be down with influenza like all well-bred people,—Esme Darlington has it badly,—but I cannot compass even one sneeze.”
“Where’s Omar?”
Mrs. Leith looked grave.
“Poor little chap, we must turn down an empty glass for him.”
“What—you don’t mean——?”
“Run over yesterday just outside the Mansions, and by a four-wheeler. I’m sure he never expected that the angel of death would come for him in a growler, poor little fellow.”
“I say! Little Omar dead! What a beastly shame! Mother, I am sorry.”
He sat down beside her; he was beset by a sensation of calamity. Oddly enough the hammer of fate had never yet struck on him so definitely as now with the death of a dog. But, without quite realizing it, he was considering poor black Omar as an important element in his mother’s life, now abruptly withdrawn. Omar had been in truth a rather greedy, self-seeking animal, but he had also been a companion, an adherent, a friend.
“You must get another dog,” Dion added quickly. “I’ll find you one.”
“Good of you, dee-ar boy! But I’m too old to begin on a new dog.”