is wicked, such completeness of attachment ready for the woman who is lonely.  It is so beautifully humble upon its throne, abased in its own eyes before the shrine of its mistress, on whom it depends entirely for all its happiness.  A little king, perhaps, it has the pretty manners of a little servitor.  And even when it presumes to be determined in the expressed desire for the dryness of a biscuit or the warmth of a lap, with how small a word or glance can it be laid upon its back, in the abject renunciation of every pretension, anxious only for the forgiveness that nobody with a touch of tenderness could withhold.  Ah, there is much to be thankful for in a companion with a tail!  Jessie had winning ways, the deep heart of a dog.  A toy dog she was, no doubt, but hers was no toy nature.  Cuckoo could not have shed such tears as those she now shed over any toy.  For she began to cry weakly at the mere thought that had come to her, although it was not yet become a resolve.  Life with Jessie had been very sordid, very sad.  What would life be without her?  What would such a morning as this be, for instance?  Cuckoo’s imagination set tempestuously to work, with physical aids—­such as the following.  She drew away her feet from the bottom of the bed, where they touched the little dog’s back.  Doing this she said to herself, “Now, Jessie is gone.”  Curled up, she set herself to realize the lie.  And perhaps she might have succeeded thoroughly in the sad attempt had not Jessie, in sleep missing the contact of her mistress, wriggled lazily on her side up the bed after Cuckoo’s feet, discovering which, she again composed herself to slumber.  The renunciation was not to be complete in imagination.  Jessie’s love, when present, was too frustrating.  And Cuckoo, casting away her horrible thought in a sort of hasty panic, caught her companion with a tail in her arms, and made her rest beside her, close, close.  Jessie was well content, but still sleepy.  She reposed her tiny head upon the pillow, lengthened herself between the sheets and dreamed again.  And while she dreamed, the black thought about her came back to Cuckoo.  It was assertive, and Cuckoo began to fear it.  The fear of a thought is a horrible thing; sometimes it is worse than the fear of death.  This one made Cuckoo think herself more cruel than any woman since the world began.  Yet she could not exorcise it.  On the contrary, she grew familiar with it as the day marched on, until it put on a fatal expression of duty.  All that day she revolved it.  Mrs. Brigg attacked her again.  Food was lacking.  Cuckoo’s case became desperate.  She turned over carefully all her few remaining possessions to see if there was any inanimate thing that she had omitted to turn into money.  Jessie, poor innocent, assisted with animation at the forlorn inventory, nestling among the tumbled garments, leaping on and off the bed.  Her ingenuous nature supposed some odd game to be in progress, and was anxious to play a principal and effective part