il dragging underneath the bed.

"Come on, old man!"

He got slowly to his feet; he looked regretfully at the sturdy little
figure on the bed; he tried to catch the mother's eye--sometimes she
interposed in his behalf. A little sullenly he followed the two men out
of the house.

"That's my advice, Earle," the spectacled man said as he climbed into
his car. "They can take better care of him there. The roads are
good--you can drive slowly. I wouldn't put it off; I would go right
away."

Earle went into the house and the dog strolled through the back yard,
past the cabin of Aunt Cindy the cook to the shaded side of the garage.
Here under the eaves was a ditch the boy had been digging to take off
water. He had worked on it all one rainy morning shortly before, a cool,
gusty morning, the last gasp of spring before the present first hot
spell of summer. Aunt Cindy had discovered him wet to the skin and made
a great fuss about it.

Now the shovel was stuck up where the boy had been forced to leave off
and the little wagon, partly filled with dirt, stood near by, its idle
tongue on the ground. Tail wagging, the dog whiffed the shovel, the
ditch, the wagon. Then he lay down beside the wagon, and looked off over
the hills and bottoms of the plantation quivering in the morning heat.

At the hum of the car out of the garage he sprang up and followed it to
the side of the porch. Earle ran up the steps into the house. When he
presently returned Marian and Aunt Cindy were with him and he carried
the boy in his arms. He laid him gently on the back seat of the car with
his mother. They were going to Greenville, the father said. When they
came back he could sit on the front seat like a man. Aunt Cindy handed
in the valise; just a glimpse the dog got of the little upturned sandals
on the back seat, and Earle had closed the door. The car drove slowly
off down the avenue, the sunlight that pierced the foliage flashing at
intervals on its top. The dog looked up into Aunt Cindy's ample black
face. She shook her head and went back into the house.

He sat down on his haunches, panting, then swallowing, then panting
again. He had never been allowed to follow the car. He watched it turn
into the road; the woods hid it from sight. He got to his feet and
looked round. A curtain upstairs was waving out in the slight breeze,
but from all the windows came no sound. He trotted down the avenue and
stopped, nose pointed in the direction in which