“Ev’rybuddy’s allers lyin’ to me,” he moaned; “there warn’t another dog picture like that in the hull room!”

“Don’t take no notice of him, ‘m, an’ he’ll git over it; he’s subjick to these spells of takin’ on like.  Set up, Pat, an’ act decent!  Tell the lady you’ll come when you git your boots.”

“Patsy, boy, stop crying a minute and listen to me,” I said.  “If Mrs. Kennett is willing, I have some things that will fit you; you shall come right back with me now,—­all the children have gone,—­and you and I will be alone with the sunshine and the birds and the fishes, as we were the other day, and I will tell you the dog story just as I told it to the other children this morning.”

He got up slowly, rubbed his tattered sleeve across his wet cheek, and looked at me searchingly to see if I might be trusted; then he limped to the sink, treated his face and hands to a hasty but energetic scrub, seized his fragment of a hat, gave his brief trousers a hitch which had the air of being the last exquisite touch to a faultless toilet, and sat down on the landing to mend his twine shoe-lace.

“Who is your neighbor in Number 32, Mrs. Kennett?” I asked as I rose to go.  “I went there to find you.”

“Did you indeed, ’m?  Well, I hope she treated you civil, ’m, though it don’t be much in her line.  She’s a Mis’ Mooney, ’m.  I know her, but she don’t know me anny more sence she’s riz in the wurrld.  She moved out of this house whin I moved into it, but none of us ladies here is good enough for her to ’sociate with now, ’m!  You see her husband was in the rag, sack, and bottle business, ’m, ’n a wealthy gintleman friend set him up in a fish-cart, an’ it’s kind of onsettled her, ’m!  Some folks can’t stan’ prosperity.  If ’t bed bin grad_joo_al like, she might have took it more natcheral; but it come all of a suddent, an’ she’s that purse-proud now, ‘m, that she’ll be movin’ up on Nob Hill ef she don’t hev no stroke o’ bad luck to show ’er her place!  Good day, ’m!”

I carved my way through the tin cans and bottles again under the haughty eye of my Duchess of the fish-cart, and in a few minutes Patsy and I were again in Silver Street.

When we entered the room he looked about with an expression of entire content.  “It’s all here!” he said with a sigh, as if he had feared to find it a dream.

The chair with its red cushion pleased him greatly; then, after a few moments’ talk to make him feel a little at home, we drew up to the picture, and I took his cleanest hand in mine, and told him the story of Victor, the brave St. Bernard dog.

It was an experience never to be repeated and never to be forgotten!

[Illustration:  “THE STORY OF VICTOR.”]

* * * * *

As you sit at twilight in the “sweet safe corner of the household fire,” the sound of the raindrops on the window-pane mingling with the laughing treble of childish voices in some distant room, you see certain pictures in the dying flame,—­pictures unspeakably precious to every one who has lived, or loved, or suffered.