and caught in mid-air. It was the first time Leonard had looked
bright.

'So you expect us to sanction your private dog stealing?' said
Aubrey.

'I have been watching for his mistress to come back,' said Leonard;
'but she must have passed an hour ago, and she does not deserve to
have him, for she never looked back for him; and he had run up to me,
frisking and making much of me, as if he had found an old friend.'

'Perhaps it will run home when we move.'

No such thing; it trotted close at Leonard's heels, and entered the
house with them. Barbara was consulted, and on Leonard's deposition
that the dog's mistress was in deep mourning, opined that she could
be no other than the widow of an officer, who during his lingering
illness had been often laid upon the beach, and had there played with
his little dogs. This one, evidently very young, had probably, in
the confusion of its puppy memory, taken the invalid for its lost
master.

'Stupid little thing,' said Aubrey; 'just like an undersized lady's
toy.'

'It knows its friends. These little things have twice the sense of
overgrown dogs as big and as stupid as jackasses.'

A retort from Leonard was welcome in Ethel's ears, and she quite
developed his conversational powers, in an argument on the sagacity