Warrington stared into the kind brown eyes and pulled the ragged ears.  There was a kind of guilt in the old dog’s eyes, for dogs have consciences.  If only he dared tell his master!  There was somebody else now.  True, this somebody else would never take the master’s place; but what was a poor dog to do when he was lonesome and never laid eyes on his master for months and months?  Nobody paid much attention to him in this house when the master was away.  He respected aunty (who had the spinster’s foolish aversion for dogs and the incomprehensible affection for cats!) and for this reason never molested her supercilious Angora cat.  Could he be blamed if he sought (and found) elsewhere affection and confidence?  Why, these morning rides were as good as a bone.  She talked to him, told him her secrets (secrets he swore on a dog’s bible never to reveal!) and desires, and fed him chicken, and cuddled him.  There were times when he realized that old age was upon him; some of these canters left him breathless and groggy.

“I’ve been thinking, boy,” the master’s voice went on.  “New York isn’t so much, after all.  I wasn’t city born, and there are times when the flowing gold of the fields and the cool woods call.  Bah!  There’s nothing now to hold me anywhere.  I hope she’ll make him happy; she can do it if she tries.  Heigh-ho! the ride this morning has made me sleepy.  To your rug, boy, to your rug.”

Warrington stretched himself on the lounge and fell asleep.  And thus the aunt found him on her return from church.  She hated to wake him but she simply could not hold back the news till luncheon.  She touched his arm, and he woke with the same smile that had dimpled his cheeks when he was a babe in her arms.  Those of us who have retained the good disposition of youth never scowl upon being awakened.

“Aha,” he cried, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Richard, I wish you had gone to church this morning.”

“And watched the gossips and scandal-mongers twist their barbs in Mrs. Bennington’s heart?  Hardly.”

She gazed at him, nonplussed.  There was surely something uncanny in this boy, who always seemed to know what people were doing, had done or were going to do.

“I wouldn’t have believed it of my congregation,” she said.

“Oh, Mrs. Bennington is a woman of the world; she understands how to make barbs harmless.  But that’s why I never go to church.  It doesn’t soothe me as it ought to; I fall too easily into the habit of pulling my neighbor’s mind into pieces.  Gossip and weddings and funerals; your reputation in shreds, your best girl married, your best friend dead.  I find myself nearer Heaven when I’m alone in the fields.  But I’ve been thinking, Aunty.”

“About what?”

“About coming home to stay.”

“Oh, Richard, if you only would!” sitting beside him and folding him in her arms.  “I’m so lonely.  There’s only you and I; all the others I’ve loved are asleep on the hill.  Do come home, Richard; you’re all I have.”