Or perhaps it wasn't so much laziness as wilful revolt against the
monotony of work, for, after all, it's not the 'unting as 'urts the
'osses, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard old road! I loafed
for a long time in a sort of sit-easy torpor, with Bobs' head between
my knees while Dinky-Dunk pored over descriptive catalogues about
farm-tractors, for by hook or by crook we've got to have a tractor for
Alabama Ranch.

"Bobs," I said after studying my collie's eyes for a good many
minutes, "you are surely one grand old dog!"

Whereupon Bobs wagged his tail-stump with sleepy content. As I bent
lower and stared closer into those humid eyes of his, it seemed as
though I were staring down into a bottomless well, through a peep-hole
into Infinity, so deep and wonderful was that eye, that dusky pool of
love and trust. It was like seeing into the velvet-soft recesses of a
soul. And I could stare into them without fear, just as Bobs could
stare back without shame. That's where dogs are slightly different
from men. If I looked into a man's eye like that he'd either rudely
inquire just what the devil I was gaping at or he'd want to ask me out
to supper in one of those Pompeian places where a bald-headed waiter
serves lobsters in a _chambre particuliere_.

But all I could see in the eye of my sedate old Bobs was love, love
infinite and inarticulate, love too big ever to be put into words.

"Dinky-Dunk," I said, interrupting my lord and master at his reading,
"if God is really love, as the Good Book says, I don't see why they
ever started talking about the Lamb of God."

"Why shouldn't they?" asked Diddums, not much interested.

"Because lambs may be artless and innocent little things, but when
you've got their innocence you've got about everything. They're not
the least bit intelligent, and they're self-centered and self-immured.
Now, with dogs it's different. Dogs love you and guard you and ache to
serve you." And I couldn't help stopping to think about the dogs I'd
known and loved, the dogs who once meant so much in my life: Chinkie's
Bingo, with his big baptizing tongue and his momentary rainbow as he
emerged from the water and shook himself with my stick still in his
mouth; Timmie with his ineradicable hatred for cats; Maxie with all
his tricks and his singsong of howls when the piano played; Schnider,
with his mania for my slippers and undies, which he carried into most
unexpected quarters; and Gyp, God bless him,