A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs Part 4

This was Mop's last public appearance. He retired to his bed before the kitchen range, and gradually and slowly he faded away: amiable, unrepining, devoted to the end. A consultation of doctors showed that his case was hopeless, and Mop was condemned to be carried off to be killed humanely by the society founded by Mr. Bergh, where without cruelty they end the sufferings of animals. Mop had not left his couch for weeks. His master spoke to him about it, with tears in his eyes, one night. He said: "To-morrow must end it, old friend. 'Tis for your sake and your relief. It almost breaks my heart, old friend. But there is another and a better world--even for dogs, old friend. And for old acquaintance' sake, and for old friendship's sake, I must have you sent on ahead of me, old friend."

The next morning, when he came down to breakfast, there by the empty chair sat Mop. How he got himself up the stairs n.o.body knows. But there he was, and the society which a good man founded saw not Mop that day.

The end came soon afterwards. And Mop has gone on to join Whiskie and Punch in their waiting for The Boy.

The family went abroad for a year's stay, when Mop died, and they rented the house to good people and good tenants, who have never been forgiven for one particular act. They buried a dog of their own in the family plot in the back-yard, and under the ailantus-tree which shades the graves of the cats and the dogs; and The Boy feels that they have profaned the spot!

It seemed to his master, after the pa.s.sing of Mop, that the master's earthly account with dogs was closed. The pain of parting was too great to be endured. But another Dandie came to him, one Christmas morning, to fill the aching void; and for a time again his life is not a dogless one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROY AND HIS MASTER]

The present ruler of the household has a pedigree much longer and much straighter than his own front legs. Although he comes from a distinguished line of prize-winning thoroughbreds, he never will be permitted to compete for a medal on his own behalf. The Dog Show should be suppressed by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dogs. It has ruined the dispositions and broken the hearts of very many of the best friends humanity ever had. And the man who would send his dog to the Dog Show, would send his wife to a Wife Show, and permit his baby to be exhibited, in public, for a blue ribbon or a certificate--at an admission-fee of fifty cents a head!

Mop's successor answers to the name of Roy--when he answers to anything at all. He is young, very wilful, and a little hard of hearing, of which latter affliction he makes the most. He always understands when he is invited to go out. He is stone-deaf, invariably, when he is told to come back. But he is full of affection, and he has a keen sense of humor. In the face he looks like Thomas Carlyle, and Professor John Weir declares that his body is all out of drawing!

At times his devotion to his mistress is beautiful and touching. It is another case of "Mary and the Lamb, you know." If his mistress is not visible, he waits patiently about; and he is sure to go wherever she goes. It makes the children of the neighborhood laugh and play. But it is severe upon the master, who does most of the training, while the mistress gets most of the devotion. That is the way with lambs, and with dogs, and with some folks!

Roy is quite as much of a fighter as was any one of the other dogs; but he is a little more discriminating in his likes and his dislikes. He fights all the dogs in Tannersville; he fights the Drislers' Gyp almost every time he meets him; he fights the Beckwiths' Blennie only when either one of them trespa.s.ses on the domestic porch of the other (Blennie, who is very pretty, looks like old portraits of Mrs. Browning, with the curls hanging on each side of the face); and Roy never fights Laddie Pruyn nor Jack Ropes at all. Jack Ropes is the hero whom he worships, the beau ideal to him of everything a dog should be. He follows Jack in all respects; and he pays Jack the sincere flattery of imitation. Jack, an Irish setter, is a thorough gentleman in form, in action, and in thought. Some years Roy's senior, he submits patiently to the playful capers of the younger dog; and he even accepts little nips at his legs or his ears. It is pleasant to watch the two friends during an afternoon walk. Whatever Jack does, that does Roy; and Jack knows it, and he gives Roy hard things to do. He leads Roy to the summit of high rocks, and then he jumps down, realizing that Roy is too small to take the leap. But he always waits until Roy, yelping with mortification, comes back by the way they both went. He wades through puddles up to his own knees, but over Roy's head; and then he trots cheerfully away, far in advance, while Roy has to stop long enough to shake himself dry.

But it was Roy's turn once! He traversed a long and not very clean drain, which was just large enough to give free pa.s.sage to his own small body; and Jack went rushing after. Jack got through; but he was a spectacle to behold. And there are creditable eye-witnesses who are ready to testify that Roy took Jack home, and sat on the steps, and laughed, while Jack was being washed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROY]

Each laughed on the wrong side of his mouth, however--Jack from agony, and Roy from sympathy--when Jack, a little later, had his unfortunate adventure with the loose-quilled, fretful, Onteora porcupine. It nearly cost Jack his life and his reason; and for some time he was a helpless, suffering invalid. Doctors were called in, chloroform was administered, and many delicate surgical operations were performed before Jack was on his feet again; and for the while each tail drooped. Happily for Roy, he did not go to the top of the Hill-of-the-Sky that unlucky day, and so he escaped the porcupine. But Roy does not care much for porcupines, anyway, and he never did. Other dogs are porcupiney enough for him!

Roy's a.s.sociation with Jack Ropes is a liberal education to him in more ways than one. Jack is so big and so strong and so brave, and so gentle withal, and so refined in manners and intellectual in mind, that Roy, even if he would, could not resist the healthful influence. Jack never quarrels except when Roy quarrels; and whether Roy is in the right or in the wrong, the aggressor or the attacked (and generally he begins it), Jack invariably interferes on Roy's behalf, in a good-natured, big-brother, what-a-bother sort of way that will not permit Roy to be the under dog in any fight. Part of Roy's dislike of Blennie--Blennie is short for Blenheim--consists in the fact that while Blennie is nice enough in his way, it is not Roy's way. Blennie likes to sit on laps, to bark out of windows--at a safe distance. He wears a little sleigh-bell on his collar. Under no circ.u.mstances does he play follow-my-leader, as Jack does. He does not try to do stunts; and, above all, he does not care to go in swimming.

The greatest event, perhaps, in Roy's young life was his first swim. He did not know he could swim. He did not know what it was to swim. He had never seen a sheet of water larger than a road-side puddle or than the stationary wash-tubs of his own laundry at home. He would have nothing to do with the Pond, at first, except for drinking purposes; and he would not enter the water until Jack went in, and then nothing would induce him to come out of the water--until Jack was tired. His surprise and his pride at being able to take care of himself in an entirely unknown and unexplored element were very great. But--there is always a _But_ in Roy's case--but when he swam ash.o.r.e the trouble began. Jack, in a truly Chesterfieldian manner, dried himself in the long gra.s.s on the banks. Roy dried _him_self in the deep yellow dust of the road--a medium which was quicker and more effective, no doubt, but not so pleasant for those about him; for he was so enthusiastic over his performance that he jumped upon everybody's knickerbockers, or upon the skirts of everybody's gown, for the sake of a lick at somebody's hand and a pat of appreciation and applause.

Another startling and never-to-be-forgotten experience of Roy's was his introduction to the partridge. He met the partridge casually one afternoon in the woods, and he paid no particular attention to it. He looked upon it as a plain barn-yard chicken a little out of place; but when the partridge whirled and whizzed and boomed itself into the air, Roy put all his feet together, and jumped, like a bucking horse, at the lowest estimate four times as high as his own head. He thought it was a porcupine! He had heard a great deal about porcupines, although he had never seen one; and he fancied that that was the way porcupines always went off!

Roy likes and picks blackberries--the green as well as the ripe; and he does not mind having his portrait painted. Mr. Beckwith considers Roy one of the best models he ever had. Roy does not have to be posed; he poses himself, willingly and patiently, so long as he can pose himself very close to his master; and he always places his front legs, which he knows to be his strong point, in the immediate foreground. He tries very hard to look pleasant, as if he saw a chipmunk at the foot of a tree, or as if he thought Mr. Beckwith was squeezing little worms of white paint out of little tubes just for his amus.e.m.e.nt. And if he really does see a chipmunk on a stump, he rushes off to bark at the chipmunk; and then he comes back and resumes his original position, and waits for Mr. Beckwith to go on painting again. Once in awhile, when he feels that Mr. Beckwith has made a peculiarly happy remark, or an unusually happy stroke of the brush, Roy applauds tumultuously and loudly with his tail, against the seat of the bench or the side of the house. Roy has two distinct wags--the perpendicular and the horizontal; and in his many moments of enthusiasm he never neglects to use that particular wag which is likely to make the most noise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE TRIES VERY HARD TO LOOK PLEASANT"]

Roy has many tastes and feelings which are in entire sympathy with those of his master. He cannot get out of a hammock unless he falls out; and he is never so miserable as when Mrs. b.u.t.ts comes over from the Eastkill Valley to clean house. Mrs. b.u.t.ts piles all the sitting-room furniture on the front piazza, and then she scrubs the sitting-room floor, and neither Roy nor his master, so long as Mrs. b.u.t.ts has control, can enter the sitting-room for a bone or a book. And they do not like it, although they like Mrs. b.u.t.ts.

Roy has his faults; but his evil, as a rule, is wrought by want of thought rather than by want of heart. He shows his affection for his friends by walking under their feet and getting his own feet stepped on, or by sitting so close to their chairs that they rock on his tail. He has been known to hold two persons literally spellbound for minutes, with his tail under the rocker of one chair and both ears under the rocker of another one. Roy's greatest faults are barking at horses'

heels and running away. This last is very serious, and often it is annoying; but there is always some excuse for it. He generally runs away to the Williamsons', which is the summer home of his John and his Sarah; and where lodges Miss Flossie Burns, of Tannersville, his summer-girl.

He knows that the Williamsons themselves do not want too much of him, no matter how John and Sarah and Miss Burns may feel on the subject; and he knows, too, that his own family wishes him to stay more at home; but, for all that, he runs away. He slips off at every opportunity. He pretends that he is only going down to the road to see what time it is, or that he is simply setting out for a blackberry or the afternoon's mail; and when he is brought reluctantly home, he makes believe that he has forgotten all about it; and he naps on the top step, or in the door-way, in the most guileless and natural manner; and then, when n.o.body is looking, he dashes off, barking at any imaginary ox-cart, in wild, unrestrainable impetuosity, generally in the direction of the Williamsons' cottage, and bringing up, almost invariably, under the Williamsons' kitchen stove.

He would rather be shut up, in the Williamsons' kitchen, with John and Sarah, and with a chance of seeing Flossie through the wire-screened door, than roam in perfect freedom over all his own domain.

He will bark at horses' heels until he is brought home, some day, with broken ribs. Nothing but hard experience teaches Roy. There is no use of boxing his ears. That only hurts his feelings, and gives him an extra craving for sympathy. He licks the hand that licks him, until everyone of the five fingers is heartily ashamed of itself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He is stone-deaf when he is asked to come back"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He pretends he has forgotten all about it"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He poses willingly and steadily"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "He waits patiently about"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROY]

Several autograph letters of Roy's, in verse, in blank-verse, and in plain, hard prose, signed by his own mark--a fore paw dipped in an ink-bottle and stamped upon the paper--were sold by Mrs. Custer at varying prices during a fair for the benefit of the Onteora Chapel Fund, in 1896.

To one friend he wrote:

"My dear Blennie Beckwith,--You are a sneak; and a snip; and a snide; and a sn.o.b; and a snoozer; and a snarler; and a snapper; and a skunk. And I hate you; and I loathe you; and I despise you; and I abominate you; and I scorn you; and I repudiate you; and I abhor you; and I dislike you; and I eschew you; and I dash you; and I dare you.

"Your affectionate friend,

"P. S.--I've licked this spot.

"R. H.

His Roy [paw print] Hutton.

mark.

"Witness: Kate Lynch."

Inspired by Miss Flossie Williamson Burns's bright eyes, he dropped into poetry in addressing her:

"Say I'm barkey; say I'm bad; Say the Thurber pony kicked me; Say I run away--but add-- 'Flossie licked me.'

his "Roy Hutton.

mark.

"Witness: Sarah Johnson."

In honor of "John Ropes, Esquire," he went to Shakspere:

"But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of thy mountain climb, I could a tail unfold, whose lightest wag Would harrow up the roof of thy mouth, draw thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like a couple of safety-matches, start from their spheres; Thy knotted and combined locks to part right straight down the middle of thy back, And each particular brick-red hair to stand on end Full of quills, shot out by a fretful Onteora porcupine.

But this eternal blazon must not be To ears that are quite as handsome as is the rest of thy beautiful body.

("'Hamlet,' altered to suit, by)

his "Roy Hutton.

mark.

"Witness: John Johnson."

His latest poetical effort was the result of his affection for a Scottish collie, in his neighborhood, and was indited

TO LADDIE PRUYN, ESQ.

Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot, And the Dogs of Auld Lang Syne?

I'll wag a tail o' kindness yet, For the sake of Auld Ladd Pruyn.

Witnesses: Marion Lyman, Effie Waddington, Katherine Lyman.