dog, in no way designed for dignified attitudes and patronising
superiority; nevertheless, as he now wandered slowly up the street,
his nose was in the air and he said to the whole world: "The storm
may have done its best to defeat me--it has failed. I am as I was. I
ask charity of no man. I know what is due to me."

It was this that attracted Jeremy; he had himself felt thus after a
slippering from his father, or idiotic punishments from the Jampot,
and the uninvited consolations of Mary or Helen upon such occasions
had been resented with so fierce a bitterness that his reputation
for sulkiness had been soundly established with all his circle.

Mary was reading. . .! "'an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair,
knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through
a great pair of spec-t-a-c-les spectacles!'"

He touched her arm and whispered:

"I say, Mary, stop a minute--look at that dog down there."

They both stared down into the garden. The dog had stopped at the
gate; it sniffed at the bars, sniffed at the wall beyond, then very
slowly but with real dignity continued its way up the road.

"Poor thing," said Jeremy. "It IS in a mess." Then to their
astonishment the dog turned back and, sauntering down the road again
as though it had nothing all day to do but to wander about, and as
though it were not wet, shivering and hungry, it once more smelt the
gate.