IN SEARCH OF PETER.
Martell is one of those men that you might live next door to for half-a-century and never know any better. It is entirely owing to his wife and her love for Peter that Martell and I have discovered each other to be quite companionable fellows with many tastes in common, and I am smoking one of his cigars at the present moment.
Peter is the most precious and the most coveted of my possessions. He is coveted, or was, chiefly by Mrs. Martell, who fell in love with his name and his deep romantic eyes. Apart from these I can see nothing remarkable in him. He is certainly the most irresponsible hound that ever sat down in front of a motor-car to attend to his personal cleanliness, but still I should not like to part with him. "We must have a Peter," was the text of Mrs. Martell's domestic monologues, and of late, before the great disillusionment—that is, after hinting delicately to me that she would like best of all to have the Peter—she took to sallying forth, armed with the name, into the purlieus of dog-fanciers to find a criminal that would fit the punishment.
I was not altogether surprised, therefore, one afternoon when a note was brought in asking me to step round and have a cup of tea. Martell was monosyllabic as usual, and we sat and gazed into the fire.
"I don't suppose you would like to part with Peter," he said suddenly.
"I certainly should not," I answered.
Then, after a pause, "Could you tell a good lie?" he asked.
I looked up in astonishment, but just then Mrs. Martell entered and plunged in medias res. She had just returned from the last of those fruitless expeditions, and the slow realization that there can be only one Peter in the world had brought her nearly to tears.
"And I've bought such a sweet little collar for him," she said, "with 'Peter' printed in big letters."
I remembered then that the original dog was in daily danger of being arrested, his very aged collar having been chewed to pulp after his last castigation therewith.
"And a dear little pair of soft slippers, one for him to play with, and the other to smack him with if he's ever naughty, although I don't think he could be—your Peter, I mean. Have you slippers for him?"
"Well, not a pair," I said, "and not exactly slippers. One's a golf-ball, the other's more in the nature of a boot."
"Oh, but he 's such a sweet-tempered little creature, isn't he?"
I felt Martell's eye upon, me.
"Very," I said; "his early upbringing gave him a healthy body and a mellow heart. He was born in a brewery, you know, and never tasted water until I flung him into the canal the first day I had him. Since then, as often as he has time, he goes to bathe in the scummiest parts, and then comes and tells me all about it with any amount of circumstantial evidence. Most enthusiastic little swimmer he is."
"What a funny dog! But I should never allow him to go out alone—if he were mine, I mean. And what sort of food do you give him?"
"Well, he tried to swallow one of my white ties last night."
"Oh, but I should give him proper food," she said. "He doesn't hate cats, does he? I couldn't bear a dog that did."
My eyes met Martell's for one moment, then I cleared my throat. Slowly and sadly I opened the history of Peter militant, with unacknowledged borrowings from the lives of other Peters with other names. Beginning with cats I had seen in my garden looking as if they felt rather blurred and indistinct, I passed on through cats speechless and perforated, to cats that were. I told sad stories of the deaths of cats. I talked of nights of agonising shrieks, and mornings of guilty eyes and blood-stained lips. My store of reminiscences lasted five minutes, and before Mrs. Martell had recovered from their recitation I pleaded a pressing engagement and took my departure.
You will now understand why I count Martell among my friends and am at this moment, as I said before, smoking one of his cigars. It came in a box of a hundred, with the laconic note, "One for each."
As I write, my dog and my black kitten are barging in perfect accord all round my legs in pursuit of a brand-new collar with "Peter" printed in big letters.
A NEW CRAZE.
"What a tragic face you have, Miss Pootle."
"Yes, You See, I adore misery."
Notice outside a station of the Wirral Railway Co.:—
"Loiterers on the Company's premises or annoying passengers will be prosecuted."
The passenger who annoys us most and seems worthiest of prosecution is the fifth on our side of the carriage.