"I have a son in the service," he said, "sent back from South Africa,
covered with scars. I know what that Red Cross meant to him for a good
many long weeks. Go where you like, old fellow! The ship is yours, so
long as you make no trouble."
"Oh, thank you!" cried the Little Colonel, looking up at the big British
captain with a beaming face. "I'd rathah be tied up myself than to have
Hero kept down there in the hold. I'm suah he'll not bothah anybody."
Nor did he. No one from stoker to deck steward could make the slightest
complaint against him, so dignified and well behaved was he. Lloyd was
proud of him and his devotion. Wherever she went he followed her, lying
at her feet when she sat in her steamer-chair, walking close beside her
when she promenaded the deck.
Everybody stopped to speak to him, and to question Lloyd about him, so
that it was not many days before she and the great St. Bernard had made
friends of all the passengers who were able to be on deck.
The hours are long at sea, and people gladly welcome anything that
provides entertainment, so Lloyd was often called aside as she walked,
and invited to join some group, and tell to a knot of interested
listeners all she knew of Hero and the Major, and the training of the
ambulance dogs.
In return Lloyd's stories nearly always called forth some anecdote from
her listeners about the Red Cross work in America, and to her great
surprise she found five persons among them who had met Clara Barton in
some great national calamity of fire, flood, or pestilence.
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