Through the night Finn did not sleep, though he dozed occasionally
for a few minutes at a time, dreaming fitfully, waking and dozing,
of the Master and the Mistress, and the lodging they had shared of
late. The whole of the next day he passed in the same employment,
except that, in the afternoon, he had to go through the wearisome
ceremony of being introduced to a number of strange ladies, not one
among whom seemed from the smell of her clothes to have anything to
do with the Master. He comported himself through this ordeal with
dignity and patience, but, as one of the ladies said--"The dear
darling, he does look so dreadfully sad and tired of everything,
doesn't he?" To which Mrs. Sandbrook replied that this was just his
"strangeness," and that he would soon get over it. She added that
she did not object to this look of Finn's herself, he being such a
regular a-_ri_stocrat. It seemed to her in keeping with his general
appearance, she said, and quite suggestive of the sort of ancient,
ivy-covered mansion he had come from in the Old Country. The good
lady drew upon her imagination, of course, in the matter of Finn's
home in England. But she meant well, and Finn suffered her
head-pattings more gladly than those of the rest of the household,
recognizing clearly in her just about what there was to recognize,
and rightly appreciating that simple character, as being of greater
worth than the frothily pretentious nature of her daughters.
That night the master of the house announced that he thought Finn
had quite settled in his new home, and that he would now take the
Wolfhound for a stroll in the grounds without the leash. He did so,
and when they had walked twice round a lawn and down an avenue,
they came to the green gate by which Finn had first entered that
place. Finn had been walking dejectedly, his head carried low and
close to Mr. Sandbrook's legs, his mind still too full of mournful
thoughts of his lost Master to permit of his inquiring closely into
those smells and other details of his immediate surroundings, which
would have interested him in ordinary circumstances.
Now, as his eyes fell upon the green gate, an overpowering desire
to see the Master swept through his mind. He had no intention of
running away from his new owner. His one thought was just to run
down to the old lodging and see the Master again. His hind-quarters
bent under him, and the next instant saw him neatly clearing the
top of the five-foot gate, with never a thought of the
consternation he left behind him in poor Mr. Sandbrook's mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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