d from
red to white.

At tea the table jammed the hidden dog against his chest. When he sought
relief by sitting back over the form, Clem corrected the irregular
posture with a pin. At bedtime he undressed in terror lest the creature
should jump out and patter on the boards as live things will. But at
last the gas was turned off at the main, and he cautiously groped for
his pet among his little heap of clothes under the bed. That night
Clem's most outrageous story could not attract him. He roamed Elysian
fields with his dog. Like all toys, it was something better than alive.
And certainly no mortal setter ever played so many parts. It hunted rats
up the nightgown sleeves, and caught burglars by the throat as they
stole into bed. It tracked murderers over the sheet's pathless waste.
It coursed deer up and down the hills and valleys of his knees. It drove
sheep along the lanes of the striped blanket. It rescued drowning
sailors from the vasty deep around the bed. It dug out frozen travellers
from the snowdrifts of the pillow. And at last it slept soundly,
kennelled between two warm hands, and continued its adventures in
dreams.

At the first note of the bugle Alfred sprang up in bed, sure that the
drill-sergeant would come to pull him out first. As he marched
listlessly up and down the yard at drill, the wind blew pitilessly, and
the dog gnawed at him till he was red and sore. At meals and in school
he was sure that secret eyes were watching him. He searched everywhere
for some hole where he might hide the thing. But the building was too
irreproachable to shelter a mouse.

Next day was Christmas Eve. He had heard from the "permanents" that at
Christmas each child received an apple, an orange, and twelve nuts in a
paper bag. He hungered for them. Even the ordinary meals had become the
chief points of interest in life, and the days were named from the
dinners. He was forgetting the scanty and uncertain food of his home,
now that dinner came as regularly as in a rich man's house or the Zoo.
And Christmas promised something far beyond the ordinary. There was to
be pork. At Christmas, at all events, he would lay himself out for
perfect enjoyment, undisturbed by terrors. He would take the dog back,
and be at peace again.

Just before tea-time he saw the superintendent pass over to the infants'
side. He stole along the sounding corridors to the office, and
noiselessly opened the door. There was somebody there. But it was on