The sky was blue and bright.
The air was fresh and filled with a thousand perfumes.

Barnaby looked upward, and laughed with all his heart.
But it was a day he usually devoted to a long ramble, and one of the dogs--the ugliest of them all--came bounding up, and jumping round him in the fulness of his joy.

He had to bid him go back in a surly tone, and his heart smote him while he did so.

The dog retreated; turned with a half-incredulous, half-imploring look; came a little back; and stopped.
It was the last appeal of an old companion and a faithful friend--cast off.

Barnaby could bear no more, and as he shook his head and waved his playmate home, he burst into tears.
'Oh mother, mother, how mournful he will be when he scratches at the door, and finds it always shut!' There was such a sense of home in the thought, that though her own eyes overflowed she would not have obliterated the recollection of it, either from her own mind or from his, for the wealth of the whole wide world..