ut I'm inclined to think it's seen its
best days. There's a great bit of it gone." "Gone? Where?" said she.
"I don't know where it's gone, but it's off at the bottom edge behind
here." She pulled it hastily into sight, and was horrified to find a
jagged tear extending some way into the substance of the stuff; very
much, she said, as if a dog had rent it away. The dress was, in any
case, hopelessly spoilt, to her great vexation, and though they looked
everywhere, the missing piece could not be found. There were many
ways, they concluded, in which the injury might have come about, for
the choir was full of old bits of woodwork with nails sticking out of
them. Finally, they could only suppose that one of these had caused
the mischief, and that the workmen, who had been about all day, had
carried off the particular piece with the fragment of dress still
attached to it.

It was about this time, Worby thought, that his little dog began to
wear an anxious expression when the hour for it to be put into the
shed in the back yard approached. (For his mother had ordained that it
must not sleep in the house.) One evening, he said, when he was just
going to pick it up and carry it out, it looked at him "like a
Christian, and waved its 'and, I was going to say--well, you know 'ow
they do carry on sometimes, and the end of it was I put it under my
coat, and 'uddled it upstairs--and I'm afraid I as good as deceived my
poor mother on the subject. After that the dog acted very artful with
'iding itself under the bed for half-an-hour or more before bed-time
came, and we worked it so as my mother never found out what we'd
done." Of course Worby was glad of its company anyhow, but more
particularly when the nuisance that is still remembered in
Southminster as "the crying" set in.

"Night after night," said Worby, "that dog seemed to know it was
coming; he'd creep out, he would, and snuggle into the bed and cuddle
right up to me shivering, and when the crying come he'd be like a wild
thing, shoving his head under my arm, and I was fully near as bad. Six
or seven times we'd hear it, not more, and when he'd dror out his 'ed
again I'd know it was over for that night. What was it like, sir?
Well, I never heard but one thing that seemed to hit it off. I
happened to be playing about in the Close, and there was two of the
Canons met and said 'Good morning' one to another. 'Sleep well last
night?' says one--it was Mr. Henslow that one, and Mr. Lya