Tattine was getting on beautifully with her attempt to use Grandma
Luty’s name at the proper time, and in the proper place, and she
was getting on beautifully with grandma herself as well. She loved
everything about her, and wished it need not be so very long till she
could be a grandma herself, have white hair and wear snowy caps atop
of it, and kerchiefs around her neck, and use gold eye-glasses and
a knitting-basket. Grandma Luty, you see, was one of the dear,
old-fashioned grandmothers. There are not many of them nowadays. Most of
them seem to like to dress so you cannot tell a grandmother from just an
ordinary everyday mother. If you have a grandmother--a nice old one, I
mean--see if you cannot get her into the cap and kerchief, and then show
her how lovely she looks in them. But what I was going to tell you was
that Grandma Luty’s visit was all a joy to Tattine, and so when, just at
daylight one morning, the setter puppies in their kennel at the back of
the house commenced a prodigious barking, Tattine’s first thought was
for Grandma.
“It’s a perfect shame to have them wake her up,” she said to herself,
“and I know a way to stop them,” so, quiet as a mouse, she stole out
of bed, slipped into her bed-slippers and her nurse’s wrapper, that was
lying across a chair, and then just as noiselessly stole downstairs, and
unlocking the door leading to the back porch, hurried to open the gate
of the kennel, for simply to let the puppies run she knew would stop
their barking. Tattine was right about that, but just as she swung the
gate open, a happy thought struck those four little puppies’ minds, and
as she started to run back to the house, all four of them buried their
sharp little teeth in the frill of Priscilla’s wrapper.
Still Tattine succeeded in making her way across the lawn back to the
door, although she had four puppies in tow and was almost weak from
laughing.
She knew perfectly well what a funny picture she must make, with the
wrapper that was so much too large for her, only kept in place by the
big puff sleeves: and with the puppies pulling away for dear life, it
the train. When she reached the screen door, she had a tussle with them,
one by one, taking a sort of reef in the trailing skirt as each puppy
was successfully disposed of, until all of it was clear of the sharp
little teeth, and she could bang the door to between them.
I do not believe Grandma Luty ever laughed harder than when Tattine told
her all about it as they sat together in the porch that morning after
breakfast. She even laughed her cap way over on one side, so that
Tattine had to take out the gold pins and put them in again to
straighten it.
“But Grandma,” said Tattine, when they had sobered down, “those puppies,
cunning as they are now, will just be cruel setters when they grow up,
killing everything they come across, birds and rabbits and chipmunks.”
“Tattine,” said Grandma Luty, with her dear, kindly smile “your Mother
has told me how disappointed you have been this summer in Betsy and
Doctor and little Black-and-white, and that now Barney has fallen into
disgrace, since he kept you so long in the ford the other day, but I
want to tell you something. You must not stop loving them at all because
they do what you call cruel things. You have heard the old rhyme:--
“Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God has made them so:
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For ‘tis their nature to.”
“Oh, yes, I know that,” said Tattine, “and I don’t think it’s all quite
true; our dogs don’t bite (I suppose it means biting people), bad as
they are.”
“No; I’ve always thought myself that line was not quite fair to the
dogs either, but the verses mean that we mustn’t blame animals for doing
things that it is their nature to do.”
“And yet, Grandma, I am not allowed to do naughty things because it is
my nature to.”
“Ah, but, Tattine, there lies the beautiful difference. You can be
reasoned with, and made to understand things, so that you can change
your nature--I mean the part of you that makes you sometimes love to do
naughty things.
“There’s another part of your nature that is dear and good and sweet,
and doesn’t need to be changed at all. But Betsy and Doctor can only be
trained in a few ways, and never to really change their nature.
“Setters have hunted rabbits always, kittens have preyed upon birds, and
donkeys, as a rule, have stood still whenever they wanted to.”
“But why, I wonder, were they made so?”
“You nor I nor nobody knows, Tattine, but isn’t it fine that for some
reason we are made differently? If we will only be reasonable and try
hard enough and in the right way, we can overcome anything.”
“It’s a little like a sermon, Grandma Luty.”
“It’s a little bit of a one then, for it’s over, but you go this minute
and give Betsy and Doctor a good hard hug, and tell them you forgive
them.”
And Tattine did as she was bid, and Doctor and Betsy, who had sadly
missed her petting, were wild with delight.
“But don’t even you yourselves wish,” she said, looking down at
them ruefully, “that it was not your nature to kill dear little baby
rabbits?”
And Tattine thought they looked as though they really were very sorry
indeed.