ke her that 'Dolph--who in an
ordinary way should have been bounding ahead and anon bounding back to
gyrate on his hind legs and encourage her--preferred to trot ahead some
thirty or forty yards and wait for her to overtake him; nor that, when
she came up, he avoided her eyes, pretending that here a doorstep, there
a grating or water-main absorbed his curiosity. Once or twice, indeed,
before trotting off again, he left these objects of interest to run
around Tilda's heels and rub against her crutch. But she was busy with
her own plans.

So through a zig-zag of four or five dingy streets they came to one she
recognised as that leading into the Plain, or open space where the
show-people encamped. At its far end 'Dolph halted. His tail still
wagged, but his look was sidelong, furtive, uneasy.

Tilda, coming up with him, stood still for a moment, stared, and caught
her breath with a little gasp of dismay.

The Plain was empty.

Circus and menagerie, swing-boats, roundabouts, shooting-galleries--all
were gone. The whole area lay trampled and bare, with puddles where the
steam-engines had stood, and in the puddles bedabbled relics of paper
brushes, confetti bags, scraps torn from feminine flounces, twisted
leaden tubes of "ladies' tormentors" cast away and half-trodden into the
mire; the whole an unscavenged desolation. Her folk--the show-folk--had
deserted her and vanished, and she had not a penny in her pocket.
It cost Tilda all her pluck to keep what she called a tight upper lip.
She uttered no cry, but seated herself on the nearest doorstep--
apparently with deliberation, actually not heeding, still less caring,
to whom the doorstep belonged.

"Oh, 'Dolph!" she murmured.

To her credit, in the act of appealing to him, she understood the dog's
heroism, and again stretched forth her arms. He had been waiting for
this--sprang at her, and again was caught and hugged. Again the two
forlorn ones rocked in an embrace.

Brief ecstasy! The door behind them was constructed in two portions, of
which the upper stood wide, the lower deceptively on the latch. Against
this, as she struggled with Godolphus's ardour, Tilda gave a backward
lurch. It yielded, flew open, and child and dog together rolled in
across the threshold, while a shop-bell jangled madly above them.

"Get out of this--you and your nasty cur!"

Tilda picked up herself and her crutch, and stood eyeing the shopwoman,
who, summoned by the bell, had co