“Poor old fellow,” soliloquized Harrington, “I quite forgot I had him, till he whined for his dinner.”
“How confoundedly dirty he is,” observed Wentworth.
“Dirty? Oh, no—that’s his color,” said Harrington, naively. “He’s not dirty now, for I washed him.”
“The deuce you did!” replied Wentworth, laughing. “Upon my word, Harrington, you’re a regular Brahmin. Though it’s mighty good in you to take so much trouble for a brute like that. Faith, I’d have left him to his fate.”
“Oh, well,” replied Harrington, tranquilly, scanning the dog’s back, to see if any diseased spot had escaped him, “the poor old thing has something to do in this world, or he wouldn’t have been sent, and he has a right here, seeing that he does no harm. There, I guess that’ll do, and he’ll be comfortable till I get back.”
He took off his glove, patted the old dog on the head, and spoke to him. The animal, who had finished his dinner, feebly wagged his tail, and licked the kind hand, then looked up with bleared red eyes into the face of his protector, still wagging his tail.
“Good,” said Harrington; “see how grateful he is! Come, Wentworth, it’s time for us to go,” he continued, rising to his feet. “It’s after four o’clock, and I promised to be there early.”
Stooping again, he lifted the dog into the packing-case on some old rags of carpeting, put a pan of water near him, laid the tin box of sulphur and the glove on top, and turned away to the house.
“What a good fellow Harrington is,” muttered Wentworth, following him. “To think of his rescuing that old brute from the boys, and taking as much care of him as if he was Scott’s Maida! I wonder that I, who admire such things so much, never think of doing such things.”
He got into the room just as Harrington was disappearing up the flight of steps into the room above, whither he went to wash his hands and brush his clothes. In a few minutes he descended again, closed the windows, put on his slouched hat, and they set off together arm in arm.