Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/56

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
44
AUNT JO'S SCRAP-BAG

ing; for when they come home from college Saturday night, we always have a jubilee in honor of the class of '76, to which I belong.

Doggie evidently needed them more than the lads, and gobbled up the whole dozen with a rapidity that made me wish I had a beefsteak or two in my pocket. While he was finishing the last one, I slipped away, and devoutly hoped I should see the poor, dear thing no more, for it rent my heart to leave him out in the cold; yet what could I do with him in my one room?

A week or two passed, and I forgot my spotted friend in the absorbing task of getting Christmas presents ready. Every one else seemed to have forgotten him, too; for, late one snowy afternoon, as I hurried home, quite worn out with trying to shop among a mob of other women as busy and as impatient as myself, I saw a sight that made the tears come to my eyes in spite of the snow-flakes roosting on my lashes.

On the upper step of a church, close to the door, is if waiting for it to open to him, lay poor Huckleberry, dirty, thin, and evidently worn out with the hardships of his lot. Tired of asking for admittance