Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/15

Rh could occupy so much space in a man's heart and enter so deeply into his life. Little by little I have become convinced of it by seeing him grow up in my house.

Now this little living being that, while he runs distressing around the room with an air of idleness, eaten up by weariness, and while he runs in haste with the anxiety of busy, hard labor, peering into every hole, searching every corner, scrutinizing every dark spot like a detective,—stealing handkerchiefs and balls of cotton,—allows himself to be pursued. And he acts as if he got enjoyment out of us while he runs about with a stolen article in his mouth.

Sometimes he assaults fearlessly a large and vigorous man, and then frightened to death, he runs away in front of a mere simpleton. He fools around for an hour with a newspaper, does the furious lion against a shoe, smells the letters like a lover, and noses books like a book-lover, and listens at the door like a spy.