“Oh, awful!  He was a cousin of mine on dear Papa’s side of the family.  Papa and Mama used to say that they never could understand why Cousin Sophronisba Hynds didn’t pick out Tiger Bill instead of pouncing upon a perfectly innocent little Englishman.”

I sat and listened.  One thing was joyously clear and plain to me.  They liked and trusted me enough now to talk about their own people before me, which is the high sign of fellowship in South Carolina.  But learn, O outsider, that silence is golden, so far as you are concerned.  Wisely did I hold my peace, and devoutly thank the Lord that times had changed for the better.

For a great deal of that change I had to thank my dear girl, so much more clever and tactful than I. And so I would not cloud her last days with me by letting her see that I was unhappy.  Only, I was glad this afternoon to be by myself for a breathing-space.  It rests one’s face occasionally to take off one’s smile.  I took off mine, then, and let down the corners of my mouth.

The door leading to the hall was half open.  The house was full of blue-gray shadows, and had a drowsy hush upon it, a pleasanter hush than it used to know.  One heard the rushing wind outside, and above it Mary Magdalen singing one of her interminable “speretuals.”

A slinking shadow stole through the hall, a wary yellow head appeared in the door, and Beautiful Dog sneaked into the room.  Beautiful Dog had not known a happy day since the departure of Mr. Johnson.  Not all the coddlings of the cook, nor the blandishments of sympathetic housemaids consoled him for the absence of his god.  He grew thinner, if that could be possible.  His tail hung at half-mast, his ears were a signal of mourning.  Queenasheeba said he looked like “sumpin’ ’at happened to a dawg.”

One hope sustained Beautiful Dog’s drooping spirit—­the hope that he might suddenly turn a corner, or enter a room, and find the adored Johnson smiling kindly at him.  Wherefore he dared the to-be-shunned presence of other white people.  He nerved himself to enter tabooed domains.  Love sustained him.  He knew he had no business there, just as our cats knew it and, whenever they caught him at it, visited swift and dire punishment upon him.  Beautiful Dog dared even the cats, those black nightmares of his existence.

He met my glance, paused, and cringed.  But as I made no hostile movement, and seemed disposed to be friendly, Beautiful Dog grinned half-heartedly, wagged his rope of a tail dejectedly, and advanced farther.  Then he paused again, head on one side, ears forlornly flopping, and made an awkward motion with his fore paws, expressive of doubtful trust and painful inquiry.  His god had been wont to choose this particular room by preference.  Did I know where he was?  When he was coming back?

Beautiful Dog glanced wistfully at the empty chair over by the window.  Once or twice his god had allowed him to lie beside that chair while he read, and if Beautiful Dog happened to raise his head, a kind hand happened to fall upon it.  He hadn’t forgotten.  His desire now was to sneak over to the chair and sniff at it.  Perhaps by some exquisite miracle his man might suddenly appear in his old place.  Can’t miracles happen for Beautiful Dogs as well as for other folks, when times and seasons are propitious?