"It's Mr. Barker," exclaimed one of the ladies, regarding me brightly.
At a cutlery shop I then bought a stout chain, escorted the brute to
his home, and saw him tethered. The thing was rather getting on me.
The following morning he waited for me at the Floud door and was
beside himself with rapture when I appeared. He had slipped his
collar. And once more I saw him moored. Each time I had apologized to
Mrs. Judson for seeming to attract her pet from home, for I could not
bring myself to say that the beast was highly repugnant to me, and
least of all could I intimate that his public devotion to me would be
seized upon by the coarser village wits to her disadvantage.
"I never saw him so fascinated with any one before," explained the
lady as she once more adjusted his leash. But that afternoon, as I
waited in the trap for Mr. Jackson before the post-office, the beast
seemed to appear from out the earth to leap into the trap beside me.
After a rather undignified struggle I ejected him, whereupon he
followed the trap madly to the country club and made a farce of my
golf game by retrieving the ball after every drive. This time, I
learned, the child had released him.
It is enough to add that for those remaining days until the present
the unspeakable creature's mad infatuation for me had made my life
well-nigh a torment, to say nothing of its being a matter of low
public jesting.
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