Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/29

Rh Oh what a vile beggar is a man sometimes! I went reluctantly to the Municipal Hall to pay your tax. As if it were not an undeserved fortune, a direct gold contract, to have a good friend, faithful, and safe like you, for the miserable sum of four dollars! What do you want now! You that scratch with your paws against my trousers, looking at the door and then at me with the eyes of a beggar? I understand. You are boiling all over with curiosity to go and see who has entered. Go little gossip. Do not make the uproar of wishing to tear some one to pieces as if thieves were the only people that enter my house.

Poor Dick! Even if I hadn't been so affectionate, to him, and even if he did not tell me so many things with his eyes, I would still like him as much for the pleasing recreation that he gives me, with his infinite variety of attitudes and motions which I never before observed in any member of his family. He is so graceful when he stops all of a sudden with one of his front legs suspended and bent in, and with his head inclined down on one side, as if he were caught by a sudden doubt; and when he gambols around in imitation of a disc or caracoles