“Dear heart alive!” she exclaimed, borrowing one of her old mother’s expressions; “it must be a rare monster, Miles; I should have said it was not worth the carriage, but Uncle Jerry and you must know best. In the meantime, let it be, and eat your supper like a good man. I’m right down thankful to have you safe home again, and the children are both pretty well, and fell asleep an hour ago wearying for your kisses.” “You’re a good soul, Nanse,” muttered Mr. Miles down in his throat in the pauses between bolting mouthfuls of bacon. “Come and have your supper with me, lass, and I’ll kiss you again as soon as I have finished.” Mr. and Mrs. Miles had no thought save of disposing of Prince to the landlord of the Hare and Hounds the first thing next morning, though they gave him, as a matter of course also, the scraps of their supper and leave to sleep at their hearth. But the new day brought new ideas. Little Freddy—named proudly for Nanse’s little master in the last situation she had filled—fell sick in the night, and was still ill and cross in the morning when Nanse rose to light the fire and prepare the breakfast. Mr. Miles, who kept the child while the mother was thus engaged, thought to divert the boy, and partly succeeded, by drawing his attention to the strange bow-wow which daddy had brought home while Freddy was asleep last night. “You had better leave the brute all the morning, Miles, since Freddy is so taken with him,” suggested the anxious mother. “Pretty dear! he has left off crying to watch the dog. I suppose the creature will be quiet enough if nobody meddles with him, and I shall take care that neither Freddy nor Louie teases him. You will be in and out, and you can take the dog away at dinner-time quite as well as now. Perhaps the child will be better then.” When the dinner hour came the child was not better, but worse, lying listlessly with flushed face and heavy eyes, which, however, still lightened a little as they followed the entrancing apparition of the dog. Mr. and Mrs. Miles could not bear to remove the solace of their sick child, and hour by hour and day by day the departure of Prince was deferred. In this period of probation I am glad to say that Prince’s conduct was irreproachable. As Nanse fed the dog regularly, that the child, who could not eat himself, might have the pleasure of seeing the dog eat, and with a faint hope that Freddy might be induced to follow the “doggie’s” example, Prince was not exposed to the temptation of hunger, which had already proved too much for his virtue. For that matter he had not stolen in private houses, his depredations had been committed in shops, and his dulness was in his favour at this epoch, as it did not suggest an analogy between Nanse’s little larder and the regions from which he had been wont to pick and steal.