The little brown dog was fast becoming a bond of union between the lonely man and the lonelier woman.
“Your dog has chewed up my new magazine,” Miss Clementina would call to her neighbor. “Do take him home.”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Maclin would call back. “That is not my dog. My dog is chasing a gray cat out of the back yard.”
But one day the little brown dog disappeared. Mr. Maclin laid down a new doormat, and said he was glad it needn’t be chewed up right away.
Miss Clementina filled in the holes in the geranium bed, and set out some new plants. She gathered up a bone, two old shoes and a chewed-up newspaper, and expressed the hope that once more she might be able to keep the lawn tidy.
Twenty-four hours later the little brown dog had not returned. Mr. Maclin went out and gave the unoffending new doormat a savage kick. Then he put on his hat and went down the street—whistling. It was not a musical whistle. On the contrary, it was shrill and ear-piercing. It was, in fact, the whistle that the little brown dog had been wont to interpret as meaning that Mr. Maclin desired his immediate presence.
Once, when Mr. Maclin paused for breath, he heard faintly: “Dog, dog, dog!”
It was thus that Miss Clementina had been in the habit of summoning the little brown dog.
Mr. Maclin turned and walked in the direction of her voice. Folly, like misery, loves company.
“The little brown dog,” said Miss Clementina, when Mr. Maclin had overtaken her; “where do you suppose he can be? I’ve called until I’m hoarse.”