Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes ways as
odd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk on two legs,
and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful, white greyhound,
Mayflower, for instance, is as whimsical as the finest lady in the land.
Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a violent affection for a most
hideous stray dog, who made his appearance here about six months ago,
and contrived to pick up a living in the village, one can hardly tell
how. Now appealing to the charity of old Rachael Strong, the
laundress--a dog-lover by profession; now winning a meal from the
light-footed and open-hearted lasses at the Rose; now standing on his
hind-legs to extort, by sheer beggary, a scanty morsel from some pair of
"drowthy cronies," or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper
on the alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure
contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on his
throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint of
ugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's pigs;
now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of Master Brow
the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the skim-milk of Dame
Wheeler's cat:--spit at by the cat; worried by the mastiff; chased by
the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by the shoemaker; flogged
by the shopkeeper; teased by all the children, and scouted by all the
animals of the parish;--but yet living through his griefs, and bearing
them patiently, "for sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;"--and
even seeming to find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of
sunshine, or a whisp of dry straw, on which to repose his sorry carcass,
some comfort in his disconsolate condition.
In this plight was he found by May, the most high-blooded and
aristocratic of greyhounds; and from this plight did May rescue him;--
invited him into her territory, the stable; resisted all attempts to
turn him out; reinstated him there, in spite of maid, and boy, and
mistress, and master; wore out every body's opposition, by the activity
of her protection, and the pertinacity of her self-will; made him sharer
of her bed and her mess; and, finally, established him as one of the
family as firmly as herself.
Dash--for he has even won himself a name amongst us, before he was
anonymous--Dash is a sort of a kind of a spaniel; at least there is in
his mongrel composition some sign of that beautiful race. Besides his
ugliness, which is of the worst sort--that is to say, the shabbiest--he
has a limp on one leg that gives a peculiarly one-sided awkwardness to
his gait; but, independently of his great merit in being May's pet, he
has other merits which serve to account for that phenomenon--being,
beyond all comparison the most faithful, attached, and affectionate
animal that I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think
it necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does so
dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one,
who has a taste for happiness, good to look at him--so that he may now be
said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him when
strangers come in the way, and think it necessary to explain that he is
May's pet; but amongst ourselves, and those who are used to his
appearance, he has reached the point of favouritism in his own person. I
have, in common with wiser women, the feminine weakness of loving
whatever loves me--and, therefore, like Dash. His master has found out
that Dash is a capital finder, and, in spite of his lameness, will hunt a
field, or beat a cover with any spaniel in England--and, therefore, _he_
likes Dash. The boy has fought a battle, in defence of his beauty, with
another boy, bigger than himself, and beat his opponent most handsomely--
and, therefore, _he_ likes Dash; and the maids like him, or pretend to
like him, because we do--as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative
class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going with us
now to the Shaw, or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk
and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah Bint--a housewifely
occupation, to which we owe some of our pleasantest rambles--_Miss
Mitford_.--_Month. Mag_.
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