The mother glanced round. "I told Frank he mustn't come into the house, dear."
"Why can't he stay wif me, Mama?"
The voice was complaining, as if Tommy were about to cry, and Tommy seldom cried. Then he seemed to forget, and usually when he wanted anything he kept on till he got it. The dog watched closely while Steve Earle lifted him out of the mother's lap and placed him on the bed. Then he made his way to the foot of the bed and lay down firmly and with an air of quiet finality. He would stay here until this strangeness passed away.
But Earle, following the spectacled man out of the room, stopped in the doorway.
"Come on, Frank!"
He raised his eyes beseechingly to his master's face, then dropped his head between his paws, his bushy tail dragging underneath the bed.
"Come on, old man!"
He got slowly to his feet; he looked regretfully at the sturdy little figure on the bed; he tried to catch the mother's eye—sometimes she interposed in his behalf. A little sullenly he followed the two men out of the house.
"That's my advice, Earle," the spectacled man said as he climbed into his car. "They can take better care of him there. The roads are good—you can drive slowly. I wouldn't put it off; I would go right away."
Earle went into the house and the dog strolled through the back yard, past the cabin of Aunt Cindy the cook to the shaded side of the garage. Here under the eaves was a ditch the boy had been digging to take off water. He had worked on it all one rainy morning shortly before, a cool, gusty morning, the last gasp of spring before the present first hot spell of summer. Aunt Cindy had discovered him wet to the skin and made a great fuss about it.