Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/126

 At this word, which the animals well knew, the dogs began to bark and Pretty-Heart rubbed his stomach vigorously.

"Oh, Mamma!" cried Arthur.

The lady said a few words in a strange language to a woman, whose head I could see through a half open door. Almost immediately the woman appeared with some food.

"Sit down, my child," said the lady.

I did so at once. Putting my harp aside I quickly sat down in the chair at the table; the dogs grouped themselves around me. Pretty-Heart jumped on my knee.

"Do your dogs eat bread?" asked Arthur.

"Do they eat bread!"

I gave them a piece which they devoured ravenously.

"And the monkey?" said Arthur.

But there was no occasion to worry about Pretty-Heart, for while I was serving the dogs he had taken a piece of crust from a meat pie and was almost choking himself underneath the table. I helped myself to the pie and, if I did not choke like Pretty-Heart, I gobbled it up no less gluttonously than he.

"Poor, poor child!" said the lady.

Arthur said nothing, but he looked at us with wide open eyes, certainly amazed at our appetites, for we were all as famished as one another, even Zerbino, who should have been somewhat appeased by the meat that he had stolen.