"Thank you, ma'am, I'm spry!" returned a small chirping voice, and a shock head, covered with rough, carroty hair, raised itself from the pillow. Annette gave a pitying exclamation. Could it be a child's face, with those hollow, sunken features, those lusterless, staring eyes? A skeleton hand and arm were thrust out from the quilt. "I'm spry, ma'am, and the Dodger is spry too. Come out, you varmint, when the leddy's asking after your 'ealth!"--and Jack, panting, and with infinite difficulty, extracted a miserable-looking gray creature, evidently a veteran who had certainly run the tether of its nine lives, and was much battered in consequence.
"Oh, the Dodger is spry, is he?" observed Averil, with much interest, as the cat purred feebly, and began licking its lean sides. "But I hope both you and he mean to get fatter with all your good living."
"Jack was found in a cellar, Annette," she continued, stroking the shock head tenderly--"in a den of thieves. Some murder had been committed in a drunken brawl. The gang had been obliged to seek a fresh hiding-place, and Jack, who was crippled with hip disease, had been left there, forgotten. The good city missionary who discovered him, and told me the story, found him lying on a heap of moldy straw under the grating, with the cat beside him. They were both nearly starved, and half dead with cold--weren't you, Jack?"
"We was, ma'am, just so," was Jack's response. "The Dodger had brought me a mouse, but I could not stomach sich food. Dodger hasn't nothing to say to mice now. He feeds like an alderman, he does. Spry! that ain't the word for it, ma'am--he is just bursting with enjoyment, is the Dodger."
Averil smiled faintly; but as they left the room, she said in a low voice, "How long do you think he will last, Mother Midge?"
Mother Midge only shook her head. "The dear Lord only knows that, Miss Willmot. But they are making room for him and the Dodger up there, surely."
Annette opened her eyes rather widely at this remark. But Averil pressed her arm meaningly. "Don't take any notice," she whispered, when the little woman had gone on a few steps. "This is only one of her notions. She will have it that animals are to go to heaven too. I have never heard her reason it out; but she is very angry if any one ventures to dispute her theory. 'The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain,' she says, sometimes. 'But it will all be set right some day.' I never argue against people's pet theories when they are as harmless as this."