{"product_id":"2940013517844","title":"A DOG OF FLANDERS","description":"Nello and Patrasche were left all alone in the world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey were friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood. Nello was a\u003cbr\u003elittle Ardennois--Patrasche was a big Fleming. They were both of the same\u003cbr\u003eage by length of years, yet one was still young, and the other was already\u003cbr\u003eold. They had dwelt together almost all their days: both were orphaned and\u003cbr\u003edestitute, and owed their lives to the same hand. It had been the\u003cbr\u003ebeginning of the tie between them, their first bond of sympathy; and it\u003cbr\u003ehad strengthened day by day, and had grown with their growth, firm and\u003cbr\u003eindissoluble, until they loved one another very greatly. Their home was a\u003cbr\u003elittle hut on the edge of a little village--a Flemish village a league\u003cbr\u003efrom Antwerp, set amidst flat breadths of pasture and corn-lands, with\u003cbr\u003elong lines of poplars and of alders bending in the breeze on the edge of\u003cbr\u003ethe great canal which ran through it. It had about a score of houses and\u003cbr\u003ehomesteads, with shutters of bright green or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red\u003cbr\u003eor black and white, and walls white-washed until they shone in the sun\u003cbr\u003elike snow. In the centre of the village stood a windmill, placed on a\u003cbr\u003elittle moss-grown slope: it was a landmark to all the level country round.\u003cbr\u003eIt had once been painted scarlet, sails and all, but that had been in its\u003cbr\u003einfancy, half a century or more earlier, when it had ground wheat for the\u003cbr\u003esoldiers of Napoleon; and it was now a ruddy brown, tanned by wind and\u003cbr\u003eweather. It went queerly by fits and starts, as though rheumatic and stiff\u003cbr\u003ein the joints from age, but it served the whole neighborhood, which would\u003cbr\u003ehave thought it almost as impious to carry grain elsewhere as to attend\u003cbr\u003eany other religious service than the mass that was performed at the altar\u003cbr\u003eof the little old gray church, with its conical steeple, which stood\u003cbr\u003eopposite to it, and whose single bell rang morning, noon, and night with\u003cbr\u003ethat strange, subdued, hollow sadness which every bell that hangs in the\u003cbr\u003eLow Countries seems to gain as an integral part of its melody.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWithin sound of the little melancholy clock almost from their birth\u003cbr\u003eupward, they had dwelt together, Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut on\u003cbr\u003ethe edge of the village, with the cathedral spire of Antwerp rising in the\u003cbr\u003enorth-east, beyond the great green plain of seeding grass and spreading\u003cbr\u003ecorn that stretched away from them like a tideless, changeless sea. It was\u003cbr\u003ethe hut of a very old man, of a very poor man--of old Jehan Daas, who in\u003cbr\u003ehis time had been a soldier, and who remembered the wars that had trampled\u003cbr\u003ethe country as oxen tread down the furrows, and who had brought from his\u003cbr\u003eservice nothing except a wound, which had made him a cripple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen old Jehan Daas had reached his full eighty, his daughter had died in\u003cbr\u003ethe Ardennes, hard by Stavelot, and had left him in legacy her\u003cbr\u003etwo-year-old son. The old man could ill contrive to support himself, but\u003cbr\u003ehe took up the additional burden uncomplainingly, and it soon became\u003cbr\u003ewelcome and precious to him. Little Nello---which was but a pet diminutive\u003cbr\u003efor Nicolas--throve with him, and the old man and the little child lived\u003cbr\u003ein the poor little hut contentedly.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47168356745456,"sku":"2940013517844","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013517844_p0.jpg?v=1763581872","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013517844","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}