Terrier Gap

He was out cold and smiled, parched lips apart, and two lone teeth, stained a tobacco brown, stood guard, but not entirely too straight. A ragged sheet of silver batts, grade three, was draped on top and rustled in the breeze. A pair of shoes, spares with no laces, were sprouting French baguettes, and shielding the vermouth from prying eyes. He snored, so did the terrier, tied to his ankle, stretched just like his master, on his back. He shook and trembled intermittently, perhaps he was in hot pursuit of better meals and better times. And neither dog nor man suspected that their world would crumble, when grubby youngsters set alight the two and all their gear. The man was taken, by ambulance to Good Samaritan, on Shatto Street, where he arrived in poor condition and with a smell. They fixed him up, regrew his skin, of which one third had burned and he awoke, from the kind land of Demerol to ask where 'Gaps' had gone. Nobody knew about a dog, a vagrant terrier, and no one did expect that it would make him cry. All shaken, nurse Maria walked alone, her shift had ended at eleven. She stumbled at the exit, fell quite hard and was returned into the hospital at once. They locked both doors in the position of wide open, which did not go unnoticed by the dog. And minutes later he was stretched out on the bed, Ward five, room ten, just like his master, who was sleeping, with a tear stained face. They snored in concert, one a little louder, the other one had something up his sleeve. He figured, in the twilight of his slumber, that he would lick his master's face just to make sure that nothing had happened to the gaps. Well, after all he had been baptised in in their honour.