But it would be hard to part
with such a good friend. Although I have had him less than a year, he
seems very much attached to me, and I have grown more fond of him than I
would have believed possible. I am an old man now, and I think he
understands that he is all I have. Good Hero! He knows he is a comfort
to his old master!"
At the sound of his name, uttered in a sad voice, the great dog got up
and laid his head on the Major's knee, looking wistfully into his face.
"Of co'se you oughtn't to give him back!" cried the Little Colonel. "If
he were mine, I wouldn't give him up for the president, or the emperor,
or the czar, or _anybody_!"
"But for the soldiers, the poor wounded soldiers!" suggested the Major.
Lloyd hesitated, looking from the dog to the empty sleeve above it.
"Well," she declared, at last, "I wouldn't give him up while the country
is at peace. I'd wait till the last minute, until there was goin' to be
an awful battle, and then I'd make them promise to let me have him again
when the wah was ovah. Just the minute it was ovah. It would be like
givin' away part of your family to give away Hero."
Suddenly the Major spoke to the dog--a quick, sharp sentence that Lloyd
could not understand. But Hero, without an instant's hesitation,
bounded from the courtyard, where they sat, into the hall of the hotel.
Through the glass doors she could see him leaping up the stairs, and,
almost before the Major could explain that he had sent him for the
shoulder-bags he wore in service, the dog was back with them grasped
firmly in his mouth.
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