AILEEN AND NERO--A DOG'S RECEIPT FOR KEEPING WELL--DOG'S IN THE SNOW IN
GREENLAND--THE LIFE-STORY OF AILEEN'S PET, "FAIRY MARY."
"Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace."
Simplicity was one of the most prominent traits of Aileen's character.
In some matters she really was so simple and innocent, that she could
hardly take her own part. Indeed, in the matter of food, her own part
was often taken from her, for any of the cats, or the smaller dogs,
thought nothing of helping the noble creature to drink her drop of milk
of a morning.
Aileen, when they came to her assistance in this way, would raise her
own head from the dish, and look down at them for a time in her kindly
way.
"You appear to be very hungry," she would seem to say, "perhaps more so
than I am, and so I'll leave you to drink it all."
Then Aileen would walk gently away, and throw herself down beneath the
table with a sigh.
There was a time when illness prevented me from leaving my room for many
days, but as I had some serials going on in magazines, I could not
afford to leave off working; I used, therefore, to write in my bedroom.
As soon as she got up of a morning, often and often before she had her
breakfast, Aileen would come slowly upstairs. I knew her quiet but
heavy footsteps. Presently she would open the door about half-way, and
look in. If I said nothing she would make a low and apologetic bow, and
when I smiled she advanced.
"I'm not sure if my feet be over clean," she would seem to say as she
put her head on my lap with the usual deep-drawn sigh, "but I really
could not help coming upstairs to see how you were this morning."
Presently I would hear more padded footsteps on the stairs. This was
the saucy champion Theodore Nero himself, there could be no mistake
about that. He came upstairs two or three steps at a time, and flung
the half-open door wide against the wall, then bounded into the room
like a June thunderstorm. He would give one quick glance at Aileen.
"Hallo!" he would say, talking with eyes and tail, "you're here, are
you, old girl? Keeping the master company, eh? Well, I'm not very
jealous. How goes it this morning, master?"
Nero always brought into the sick-room about a hundredweight at least of
jollity, sprightliness, life, and love. It used to make me better to
see him, and make me long to be up and about, and out in the dear old
pine woods again.
"You always seem to be well and happy, Nero," I said to him one day;
"how do you manage it?"
"Wait," said Nero, "till I've finished this chop bone, and I'll tell you
what you should do in order to be always the same as I am now."
As there is some good in master Nero's receipt, I give it here in fall.
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