“Where’s Beppo?—Beppo, come here!” called Pollio.
The dog came wagging his tail, and, seeing his master lying down and looking so sad, trotted up to him, and licked his face lovingly.
“Poor fellow! I’m awful worse. I’m going to be a doggie just like you. The doctor says so. How do you like being a dog?”
Beppo snuggled his head close to Pollio’s, and licked his cheek again. The two heads were of nearly the same color; but Beppo’s hair was curly, and Pollio’s straight. Beppo’s eyes were black, like his master’s, and had just now a wistful look.
“He wants something: I guess he wants to talk,” said Pollio.
“I guess so too,” said Posy, trying not to sob.
Pollio lay for some time stroking the dog’s nose. Did Beppo grieve about not talking as boys did about not walking? That _would_ be sad indeed.
It was a long day and a very long week. Pollio had friends enough. Oh, no lack of those! Nunky, papa, and Dick carried him pickapack; mamma and aunt Ann read to him; Teddy was as kind as he could be; and, as for Posy, there was nothing in the world she wouldn’t have done for her Pollio. Then the little boys in town—why, they rushed in in an army! or you would have thought so if you had heard Eliza scold about the mud they brought on their shoes. Even Jimmy Cushing came with a basket of fruit, and begged forgiveness for hitting Pollio’s nose ever so long ago.
Hop-clover came, for Pollio wanted to see her. “Poh! I s’pose you think you’re lame; but look here,” said he, dropping on all-fours. “Can you beat that?”
Hop-clover humbly confessed that she couldn’t. _Her_ lameness wasn’t much: a horse never stepped on _her_; she only fell down stairs when she was a baby, and she _’spected_ she lost out one o’ the bones. But now she could read in the Second Reader, and _she_ didn’t care.
Mrs. Pitcher was so charmed with Hop-clover’s sweet little face and patient ways, that she gave her some of Edith’s dresses, and asked her to come twice a week and stay to tea. This made the little girl perfectly happy.
“Oh, how good your mamma is!” said she to Posy. “It’s wicked to wish you was cats and dogs, and I don’t; but I _’most_ wish I was your Muff or your Beppo, so I could live in this house. I like a house that has a _sign_ to it,” added she, looking wistfully at the framed motto over the nursery-door: “God bless our home.”