That night the nurse reported gayly to Vail that the invalid seemed fifty per cent better and that he had actually been hungry for his supper. Wherefore--as though one household could hold only a certain amount of hunger--Thaxton failed to summon up the remotest semblance of appetite for his own well-served dinner. But he talked very much and very gayly at times throughout the meal, and he even forced himself to meet Doris’s gaze in exaggeratedly fraternal fashion and to laugh a great deal more than Miss Gregg’s acid witticisms demanded. Macduff, too, graced the evening meal with his presence for the first time since Clive’s arrival. For hours he had lain beside his master’s bed, curled happily within reach of Clive’s caressing hand. The dog’s deadly fear was gone--the fear lest he should never again be allowed to see and to be with his god. Clive was still there and was still his chum. And the barrier door was no longer closed. Thus Macduff at last had scope to think of other things than of the terror of losing his rediscovered deity. Among these other things was the fact that he was ravenously hungry and that at Thaxton’s side at the dinner table there was much chance for tidbits. Hence he attended dinner, lying again on the floor at Vail’s left for the servants to stub their toes over as of yore. “So we have the sorrowing Macduff among us once more!” remarked Miss Gregg. “That is what I call a decidedly limited rapture. Especially when he registers fleas. I verily believe he is the most popular and populous flea-caféteria in all dogdom. Why, that collie--!” “Oh, I love to see him lying there again, so happy and proud!” spoke up Doris, tossing him a fragment of chicken. “Dear old Mac!” Thaxton’s smile became galvanic and forced. His heart smote painfully against his ribs. “Love me, love my dog!” he quoted, miserably, to himself. Under cover of Miss Gregg’s railings against long-haired canines that scratched fleas and lay where people stumbled over them Vail lapsed into gloomy brooding. “A week ago,” he told himself, chewing morbidly on the bitter reflection, “a week ago Macduff cared more for me than for any one else. Doris certainly cared no more for any one else than she cared for me. And to-night--! Neither of them has a thought for any one but Clive Creede. The half-gods may as well put up the shutters when the whole gods arrive. Funny old world!... _Rotten_ old world!” “Just as there are only two kinds of children--bad children and sick children,” Miss Gregg was orating, “so there are only two kinds of dogs--fleasome dogs and gleesome dogs. Fleasome dogs that scratch all the time and gleesome dogs that jump up on you with muddy paws. Isn’t that true, Thax? Now admit it!” Hearing his own name as it penetrated, shrilly, far down into his glum reverie, Vail recalled himself jerkily to his duties as host.