The Untouched Bowl

I have kept dogs my whole life. A dog that has lost its master does not finish breakfast. It mopes, it waits at the door, it carries one shoe about the house like a grievance. This one had not started its breakfast, and the bowl was full, and the spaniel lay by the cold hearth with the particular calm of an animal that has been recently, thoroughly reassured. Someone had comforted that dog. Someone had been in the locked house, on the morning its master died, and had taken the time to be kind.