Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/321

 The dog rose with a long, weary, mangy sigh, but with a lazy sort of calculation, before his rope (which was short) grew taut―which was good judgment on his part, for his neck was sore; and his feet being tender, he felt his way carefully and painfully over the metal, as if he feared that at any step he might spring some treacherous, air-trigger trap-door which would drop and hang him.

'Nit, you chaps,' said Bill, 'and wait for me.' The push rubbed its head with its hat, said 'Good-night, Mrs. Ashpennel,' and was absent, spook-like.

When the funeral reached the street, the lonely 'trap' was, somehow, two blocks away in the opposite direction, moving very slow, and very upright, and very straight, like an automaton.