Page:Dapples of the Circus (1943).pdf/179

 ing, but ran like a streak for the partly open door. A second later he slipped inside, and the dark, seething, burning building had hidden him from sight.

Freckles's first impression, as he darted into the flaming building, was that he could never live in it long enough to find Dapples. The smoke was so thick that he could scarcely draw a breath, while the flames in a more distant portion of the building roared and crackled ominously.

Should he go back, or should he go forward? The policeman had called to him to come back, perhaps he ought to. But then, in a flash, he thought of a hundred loving little acts of Dapples. How he had rubbed his face against his cheek in the hospital. How his soft lips went feeling over his hands, or prospecting curiously in his pocket for sugar. Sometimes it had seemed to Freckles, as he leaned against the little horse in the big top, where thousands of people were staring at them both, that he could fairly feel love come from