She put the pan down on the porch and stood back from it. The brown eyes of the dog glowed more brightly. He hesitatingly hobbled up the steps.
A single sniff of the tidbits in the pan, and the dog fell to wolfishly, not stopping to chew at all, but fairly jerking the meat into his throat with savage snaps.
"Oh, don't gobble so!" gasped Dot. "It--it's bad for your indigestions--and isn't polite, anyway."
"Guess you wouldn't be polite if you were as hungry as he is," Tess observed.
The dog was so tired that he lay right down, after a moment, and ate with his nose in the pan. Dot ventured to pat his wet coat and he thumped his tail softly on the boards, but did not stop eating.
At this juncture Uncle Rufus came shuffling up the path from the hen-coop. Uncle Rufus was a tall, stoop-shouldered, pleasantly brown negro, with a very bald crown around which was a narrow growth of tight, grizzled "wool." He had a smiling face, and if the whites of his eyes were turning amber hued with age he was still "purty pert"--to use his own expression--save when the rheumatism laid him low.
"Whar' yo' chillen done git dat dawg?" he wanted to know, in astonishment.
"Oh, Uncle Rufus!" cried Dot. "He came along looking _so_ wet----"
"And he was _so_ tired and hungry," added Tess.
"I done spec' yo' chillen would take in er wild taggar, ef one come erlong lookin' sort o' meachin'," grumbled the colored man.
"But he's so good!" said Tess. "See!" and she put her hand upon the handsome head of the bedraggled beast.
"He jes' er tramp dawg," said Uncle Rufus, doubtfully.
"He's only tired and dirty," said Tess, earnestly. "I don't believe he wants to be a tramp. He doesn't look at all like the tramps Mrs. MacCall feeds at the back door here."
"Nor like those horrid Gypsies that came to the house the other day," added Dot eagerly. "I was afraid of them."
"Well, it suah ain't b'long 'round yere--dat dawg," muttered Uncle Rufus. "It done run erway f'om somewhar' an' hit trabbel far--ya-as'm!"
He pulled the ears of the big dog himself, in a kindly fashion, and the dog pounded the porch harder with his tail and rolled a trusting eye up at the little group. Evidently the tramp dog was convinced that this would be a good place to remain in, and "rest up."