I heard and nodded.
Enderby led me to the lounge or loafing-room, an oak-paneled apartment in the rear of the floor above, with huge leather chairs and a seat in the bay window. Save for a gray-haired old chap dozing over a copy of Simplicissimus, the room was deserted.
But no sooner had Enderby seated himself on the window-seat than there was a rush and a commotion, and a short, glad bark, and Nubbins, the steward’s bull-terrier, bounded in and landed at Enderby’s side with canine expressions of great joy.
I reached forward to pat him, but he paid absolutely no attention to me.
At last his wriggling subsided, and he settled down with his head on Enderby’s knee, the picture of content. Then I recalled my uncle’s parting injunction.
“Friend of yours?” I suggested.
Enderby smiled. “Yes,” he said, “we’re friends, I guess. And the funny part of it is that he doesn’t pay any attention to any one else except his master. They all act that way with me, dogs do.” And he pulled Nubbins’s stubby ears.
“Natural attraction, I suppose,” said I.
“Yes, it is,” he answered, with the modest frankness of a big man. “It’s a thing hard to explain, though there’s a sort of reason for it in my case.”
I pushed toward him a little tobacco-laden teak-wood stand hopefully. He refilled and lighted.