If you lifted Wasp up in your arms to have a look at him, he flashed his
alabaster teeth in your face one moment, and fleshed them in your nose
the next. He never looked you straight in the face, but aslant, from
the corners of his wicked wee eyes.
In course of time--not Pollok's--Wasp's black puppy-hair fell off, and
discovered underneath the most beautiful silvery-blue coat ever you saw
in your life; but his puppy-manners did not mend in the least. In his
case the puppy was the father of the dog, and if anything the son was
worse than the father.
Talk of growing, oh! he did grow: not to the height--don't make any
mistake, please; Wasp calculated he was plenty high enough already--but
to the length, if you like. And every day when I went down to see him
Annie would innocently ask me--
"See any odds on him this morning, doctor?"
"Well, Annie," I would say, "he really does seem to get a little longer
about every second day."
"La! yes, sir, he do grow," Annie would reply--"'specially when I puts
him before the fire awhile."
Indeed, Annie assured me she could see him grow, and that the little
blanket with which she covered him of a night would never fit in the
morning, so that she had to keep putting pieces to it.
As he got older, Wasp used to make a flying visit upstairs to see the
parson, but generally came flying down again; for the parson isn't
blessed with the best of tempers, anyhow. Quickly as he returned, Wasp
was never down in time to avoid a kick from the clergyman's boot, for
the simple reason that when Wasp's fore-feet were at the kitchen-door
his hindquarters were never much more than half-way down the stairs.
N.B.--I forgot to say that this story may be taken with a grain of salt,
if not found spicy enough to the taste.
There was a stove-pipe that lay in a back room; the pipe was about two
yards long, more or less. Wasp used to amuse himself by running in at
one end of it and out at the other. Well, one day he was amusing
himself in this sort of way, when just as he entered one end for the
second time, what should he perceive but the hindquarters of a pure-bred
Skye just disappearing at the other. (You will please to remember that
the stove-pipe was two yards long, more or less.) Day after day Wasp
set himself to pursue this phantom Skye, through the pipe and through
the pipe, for Wasp couldn't for the life of him make out why the animal
always managed to keep just a _little_ way ahead of him. Still he was
happy to think that day after day he was gaining on his foe, so he kept
the pot a-boiling. And one day, to his intense joy, he actually caught
the phantom by the tail, in the pipe. Joy, did I say? I ought to have
said sorrow, for the tail was his own; but, being a game 'un, he
wouldn't give in, but hung on like grim death until the plumber came and
split the pipe and relieved him. (Don't forget the length of the pipe,
please.) Even after he _was_ clear he spun round and round like a Saint
Catherine's wheel, until he had to give in from sheer exhaustion. Yes,
he was a long dog.
And it came to pass, or was always coming to pass, that he grew, and he
grew, and he grew, and the more he grew, the longer and thicker his hair
grew, till, when he had grown his full length--and I shouldn't like to
say how long that was--you couldn't have told which was his head and
which was his tail till he barked; and even Annie confessed that she
frequently placed his dish down at the wrong end of him. It was funny.
If you take half a dozen goat-skins and roll them separately, in
cylinders, with the hairy side out, and place them end to end on the
floor, you will have about as good an idea of Wasp's shape and
appearance as any I can think about. You know those circular
sweeping-machines with which they clean the mud off the country roads?
Well, Wasp would have done excellently well as the roller of one of
those; and indeed, he just looked like one of them--especially when he
was returning from a walk on a muddy morning. It was funny, too, that
any time he was particularly wet and dirty, he always came to the front
door, and made it a point of duty always to visit the drawing-room to
have a roll on the carpet previously to being kicked downstairs.
Getting kicked downstairs was Wasp's usual method of going below. I
believe he came at last to prefer it--it saved time.
Wasp's virtues as a house-dog were of a very high order: he always
barked at the postman, to begin with; he robbed the milkman and the
butcher, and bit a half-pound piece out of the baker's leg. No
policeman was safe who dared to live within a hundred yards of him. One
day he caught one of the servants of the gas company stooping down
taking the state of the metre. This man departed in a very great hurry
to buy sticking-plaster and visit his tailor.
I lost sight of Wasp for about six months. At the end of that time I
paid the parson a visit. When I inquired after my longitudinal friend,
that clergyman looked very grave indeed. He did not answer me
immediately, but took two or three vigorous draws at his meerschaum,
allowing the smoke to curl upwards towards the roof of his study, and
following it thoughtfully with his eyes; then he slowly rose and
extracted a long sheet of blue foolscap from his desk, and I imagined he
was going to read me a sermon or something.
"Ahem!" said the parson. "I'll read you one or two casual items of
Wasp's bill, and then you can judge for yourself how he is getting on."