Then, while she stood blinking, of a sudden a yellowish brown body bounded at her out of the sun-dazzle, pushed her tottering, danced back, and leapt at her again, springing to lick her face, and uttering sharp, inarticulate noises from a throat bursting with bliss.

“’Dolph!  O ’Dolph!”

Tilda sank on the lowest step and stretched out both arms.  The dog, rushing between them, fairly bowled her backwards; lit in her lap and twisted his body round ecstatically, thrusting, nuzzling at her bosom, her neck, her face—­devouring her with love.  In her weakness she caught him around the chest, close behind the forelegs, and hugged him to her.  So for a quarter of a minute the two rocked together and struggled.

“’Dolph!  O good dog! . . .  Did Bill send yer?”

’Dolph, recoiling, shook his neck-ruff and prepared for another spring; but Tilda pushed him back and stood up.  “Take me along to him,” she commanded, and lifted her face impudently to the clock-face of St. Barnabas above the mean roofs.  “Barnabas, are yer?  Then give my compliments to the doctor, you Barnabas, an’ tell ’im to cheese it.”  ’Dolph—­short for Godolphus—­pricked both ears and studied the sky-line.  Perceiving nothing there—­not even a swallow to be chased—­he barked twice (the humbug!) for sign that he understood thoroughly, and at once fell to new capers by way of changing the subject.  Tilda became severe.  “Look here, Godolphus,” she explained, “this is biz-strict biz.  You may wag your silly Irish tail, but that don’t take me in.  Understand? . . .  Well, the first thing you ’ave to do is take me to Bill.”

Godolphus was dashed; hurt, it may be, in his feelings.  Being dumb, he could not plead that for three weeks daily he had kept watch on the hospital door; that, hungry, he had missed his meals for faith, which is the substance of things unseen; that, a few hours ago, having to choose between half-gods assured and whole gods upon trust—­an almost desperate trust—­he had staked against the odds.  Or, it may be, he forgot all this, and only considered what lay ahead for the child.  At any rate, his tail, as he led the way, wagged at a sensibly lower angle.

“Bill can read any kind of ’andwriting,” said Tilda, half to herself and half to the dog.  “What’s more, and whatever’s the matter, Bill ’elps.”

So she promised herself.  It did not strike 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.