RONALD became her ‘fidus Achates’ and Lord High Almoner in all her acts
of charity. Occasionally, it is true, he misunderstood or exceeded his
instructions, as, for instance, when he went round with a parcel of
physic to a sick cottager.
“How be I to take ’m? did she tell ’e?”
“No: she didn’t, but she meant all, I suppose, unless it’s written
inside.”
This was a large order, as the parcel contained castor oil, a black
draught, and six blue pills.
“And which be I to take fust? She must ha’ told ’e that.”
Again Ronald was at fault.
“Much, I allow, as the gentry do their vittles—solids fust, and drinks
atterwards.”
The prescriptions, whatever the order observed in their administration,
answered to perfection, and Ronald’s fame was greatly magnified by the
result. His drugs were in high request everywhere, and were reported to
be “powerfully fine.”
One day his wife said to him, “Ronald, would you like to hear a project I
have in hand for reclaiming a pet drunkard?”
“Very much: what is it?”
“I shall give him a dog.”
“Good Lord! how will that help him? It reminds one of a story in the
‘Arabian Nights,’ where somebody with a crack-jaw name gives to somebody
else—a porter, I think it was—a lump of lead, promising it will make his
fortune. But he wisely declined to specify by what particular method the
charm would work. I think the man weighted a fish-line with it, and
caught a salmon with a diamond in its mouth. But you can hardly expect
your scheme to work like that.”
“Wait and see, Ronald. I read in a German story book the other day how a
dog had turned a man into an early riser (I shall give you one, Ronald),
and made him charitable, and religious, and all the rest of it. Surely I
can trust my dog to reclaim a man from one single failing.”
“I should like to see how he’s going to do it,” said Ronald
incredulously. “The chances are your _protégé_ will take his dog the
first day to the nearest public-house. And, if he gets biscuits there,
as a nice dog is sure to do, he’ll want no coaxing to take his master
there every day. And the last state of that man will be worse than the
first.”
“I am afraid there is no worse possible in this case. At any rate I have
faith in my dog.”
The next day a ragged little hound, called “Judy,” was selected from the
kennels at Thorpe Hill, and despatched to the _protégé_ in question.
Pure white she was, and so small, that, at a shift, you could hold her in
the hollow of your hand. A veritable little mongrel, of course, if ever
there was one. Indeed, nothing but a mongrel would have had the capacity
for so delicate a mission. For, as we all know, it is to the mongrel
that we look for intelligence and originality. The consciousness of
inherited merit is fatal to intellectual progress in an animal of
pedigree. Partiality—but only the most prejudiced—might have called Judy
a rough Irish terrier. Only her ears didn’t lop, but were carried erect
like a donkey’s, and her legs were too long, and her tail had an ugly
“kinck” in it.
Having abused her sufficiently for her personal appearance, let me add
that she had the sweetest and most winning of faces—chiefly composed of
eyes, which were so large in comparison with the rest of her features
that they seemed to swallow them up, giving to the face, as a whole, the
thin, troubled look of premature age, which is so pathetic in any sick
animal. But Judy was far from being delicate, and enjoyed to the full
the zest and sparkle of life. With her head on one side, and her ears
pricked up, and attention bestowed on the curl of her tail, a matter in
which she was often negligent, she would have matched the best of them as
a study of arrested life.
The two—the dog and the young reprobate she was expected to reform—took
to each other with all their hearts, and soon became inseparable. But at
first Ronald’s pessimistic prophecy seemed likely to be realised. True
to his natural instinct, her master took Judy at once to the nearest
public-house, and, as the biscuits due to an intelligent dog were always
forthcoming, Judy fell in entirely with her master’s view as to the
direction their daily walk should take. Ronald triumphed maliciously but
prematurely. For Judy was to be recalled to her duty by a stern
dispensation.
It happened one day, that, as she and her master were starting, a troop
of bicyclists came scorching down the hill, and Judy, caught off her
guard and losing her head, was run over, and taken up for dead. After
long days of anxious nursing she was called slowly back to life, at least
to a measure of life. But the little dog’s nerve was gone. From that
day forward no persuasion could tempt her to follow her master along the
public road. Warned by experience, she dreaded bicyclists at every
turning. Just so far as the garden gate, and no further, she would
follow him, and, with a thin little feeble whine, plead almost in words
for a change of route. But the master’s heart was steeled. It was to be
a conflict of will between them. And which was to conquer? the dog or
the man? For days and weeks the result trembled in the scale. But the
walk grew dreary apart from his companion, and, going and returning, he
was haunted by the piteous whine. Then at last he succumbed. The day’s
walk along the high road was exchanged for a run in the nearest field or
common, and Judy’s heart rejoiced, and her spirit came again to her, and
she became—almost, but never quite—her natural self again.
Thenceforth the sympathy between these two was complete. When Judy was
ill again, almost to death, she was restful nowhere but in her master’s
presence. When he left the room, her eyes would languidly follow him;
when he came back, they kindled to life again, breathed into by a new
spirit; and when he took her in his arms, all pain and disquiet ceased,
and she lay neither shivering nor moaning—lost to all feeling but the
satisfied assurance of his love.
“Well, Ronald, and how about my experiment?”
“You’ve beaten me,” was the reply. “What a wonderful woman you are!”