Beenie's heart smote her; for
during the last hours of her morning's sleep she had been
disturbed by the howling of a dog, apparently in their own yard,
but had paid no further attention to it than that of repeated
mental objurgation: there stood the offender, looking up at her
pitifully--ugly, disreputable, of breed unknown, one of the
_canaille!_ When the girl fell down, he darted at her,
licked her cold face for a moment, then stretching out a long,
gaunt neck, uttered from the depth of his hidebound frame the
most melancholy appeal, not to Beenie, at whom he would not even
look again, but to the open door. But, when Beenie, in whom, as
in most of us, curiosity had the start of service, stooped, and,
peering more closely into the face of the girl, recognized,
though uncertainly, a known face, she too uttered a kind of howl,
and straightway raising Letty's head drew her into the house. It
is the mark of an imperfect humanity, that personal knowledge
should spur the sides of hospitable intent: what difference does
our knowing or not knowing make to the fact of human need? The
good Samaritan would never have been mentioned by the mouth of
the True, had he been even an old acquaintance of the "certain
man." But it is thus we learn; and, from loving this one and
that, we come to love all at last, and then is our humanity
complete.
Letty moved not one frozen muscle, and Beenie, growing terrified,
flew up the stair to her mistress.
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