Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/59

 Dear thing! how dirty, lean, and ugly he was! with one lame foot, a torn ear, and a bit of old rope round his neck where the collar should have been. Never mind; I loved him, and went on petting him with a reckless disregard of consequences and fleas. I had no more idea what I should do with him than if he had been an elephant; but remembering the blessed society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, I felt that I could fall back on them when all other hopes failed.

So, while Huckleberry lay on the rug, roasting first one side and then the other, with his nose on a bone, just to make him feel sure it wasn't all a dream, I sat staring at him and planning a future for him such as few dogs enjoy. He seemed to feel this, for he gurgled and grunted in his sleep, woke up now and then with a start, and stared back at me with eyes full of doggish loyalty as he whacked the floor with his grateful tail.

"One of our fellows shall take him!" I decided; and, having picked out the most tender-hearted boy among my large and choice collection, I wrote to this victim an alluring epistle, offering him a lovely carriage-dog whom I had been so fortunate as to