“To a _good_ dog, ma’am! A good dog is good enough to go with any angel--at his heels of course! If he had been a bad dog, it would have been wicked to name him after a good angel. If the dog had been Tommy--I mean if Tommy had been the dog, I should have had to call him Moloch, or Belzebub! God made the angels and the dogs; and if the dogs are good, God loves them.--Don’t he, Abdiel?” Abdiel assented after his usual fashion. The lady said nothing. Clare went on. “Abdiel won’t mind--the angel Abdiel, I mean, ma’am--he won’t mind lending his name to my friend. The dog will have a name of his own, perhaps, some day--like the rest of us!” “What is _your_ name?” “The name I have now is, like the dog’s, a borrowed one. I shall get my own one day--not here--but there--when--when--I’m hungry enough to go and find it.” Clare had grown very white. He sat down, and lay back on the grass. He had talked more in those few minutes than for weeks, and want had made him weak. He felt very faint. The dog jumped up, and fell to licking his face. “What a wicked old woman I am!” said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed the bank swiftly. She disappeared within the gate, but to return presently with a tumbler of milk and a huge piece of bread. “Here, boy!” she cried; “here is medicine for you! Make haste and take it.” Clare sat up feebly, and stared at the tumbler for a moment. Either he could hardly believe his eyes, or was too sick to take it at once. When he had it in his hand, he held it out to the dog. “Here, Abdiel, have a little,” he said. This offended the old lady. “You’re never going to give the dog that good milk!” she cried. “A little of it, please, ma’am!” “--And feed him out of the tumbler too?” “He’s had nothing to-day, ma’am, and we’re comrades!” “But it’s not clean of you!” “Ah, you don’t know dogs, ma’am! His tongue is clean--as clean as anybody’s.” Abdiel took three or four little laps of the milk, drew away, and looked up at his master--as much as to say, “You, now!” “Besides,” Clare went on, “he couldn’t get at it so well in the bottom of the tumbler.” With that he raised it to his own lips, drank eagerly, and set it on the road half empty, looking his thanks to the giver with a smile she thought heavenly. Then he broke the bread, and giving the dog nearly the half of it, began to eat the rest himself. The old lady stood looking on in silence, pondering what she was to do with the celestial beggar. “Would you mind sleeping in the greenhouse, if I had a bed put up for you?” she said at length, in tone apologetic. “This is a better place--though I wish it was warmer!” said Clare, with another smile as he looked up at the sky, in which a few stars were beginning to twinkle, and thought of the gardeners he had met. “--Don’t you think it better, ma’am?”