Two Prisoners by Thomas Nelson Page — Read

One day when Mildred had been dressed up by her mammy and taken out to walk, as she stopped on the edge of the park to rest, a fat, fawn colored puppy, as soft as a ball of wool and as awkward as a baby, came waddling up to her on the street; pulled at her dress; rolled over her feet, and would not let her alone. Mildred was delighted with it. It was quite lame in one of its legs. She played with it, and hugged it, and fed it with a biscuit; and it licked her hands and pinched her with its little white, tack-like teeth. After a while Mammy tried to drive it away, but it would not go, it had taken too great a fancy to its new found playmate to leave her, and, though Mammy slapped at it and scolded it, and took a switch and beat it, it just ran off a little way and then turned around when they moved on and followed them again, coming up to them in the most cajoling and enticing way. When they reached home Mammy shut it out of the gate; but it stayed there and cried, and finally squeezed through the fence, scraping its little fat sides against the pickets, and, running up to the porch after them, slipped into the house, and actually ran and hid itself from Mammy under some furniture in the drawing-room.

Mildred begged her father to let her keep the dog. He said she might, until they could find the owner, but that it was a beautiful puppy and the owner would probably want him. Mildred took him to her veranda and played with him, and that night she actually smuggled him into her bed; but Mammy found him and turned him out of so snug a retreat, and Mildred was glad to compromise on having him safely shut up in a box in the kitchen. Her father put an advertisement in the papers and every effort was made to find the owner, but he never appeared, which was perhaps due to Mildred's fervent prayers that he might not be found. She prayed hard that he might not come after Roy, as she named him, even if he had to die not to do so.