But for some several minutes the puppy absolutely refused to be comforted; and when the Master came in an hour or so later he understood at a glance what Finn's trouble was, though the casual observer might well have thought there was no particular change in his circumstances. The fact was Finn had sustained a real shock, and his perturbation about it lasted for nearly half an hour, after which it retired, overcome by youthful curiosity. Finn had suddenly awakened to the fact that he was no longer blind; he had stepped, at one uncertain stride, into a seeing life. It was like being born again, and that with faculties matured and sharpened by nearly a fortnight's life in the world. It really was no trifling adventure for Finn, this discovery of a new and very wonderful sense, which had come simply with the parting of the lids that covered his black-brown eyes.
He spent practically the whole of that day testing this new sense which had come to him with so great a shock. For instance, he found that if he crawled a certain distance from the foster in one direction, the air before him became whiter and whiter, until at last he stubbed his toes and his nose against it. And that was his first acquaintance with walls. Then, when he crawled in another direction, he came presently to a ledge several inches in height, and when, as the result of really herculean efforts, he had raised his fat body upon that ledge, the floor beyond jumped up and hit him very hard, and left him helpless as a turtle on its back, till the foster came and lifted him back to bed in her jaws. That was how he learned that it was not wise for very small pups to climb over the edges of beds. Towards evening, when many useful lessons had been learned, and the pup was beginning to swagger over the advantage given him by his new-found sense, in the matter of picking and choosing feeding-places, and demanding his foster-mother's attention by planting one foot on her eye, and so forth, Finn came to the conclusion that this new power he had was, upon the whole, a remarkably fine thing, and a jolly gift, even if it did keep one awake, and lead to considerable exhaustion, and---- And then he shut up his little black-brown eyes, and, well sheltered by the foster's right hind-leg and tail, went fast asleep and dreamed of warm milk.
From this point onward, Finn's progress was rapid. Whereas till now he had seemed little more than an appendage of the sheep-dog foster-mother, he now rapidly developed a personality, and a very masterful one, of his own. His eyes, which were quite as dark as the Master had desired them to be, were idle only when he slept; and the same might have been said of every part of him. He grovelled most industriously during all his waking hours, until such time as his podgy legs had hardened sufficiently to bear his weight--with many falls, of course--and then he began to scurry about on his feet. His usual style of progression at this period was to take from two to four abrupt, jerky strides, rather with the air of a fussy and corpulent old gentleman who had to catch a train, and then to subside in a confused lump, on chest and nose, with tail waggling angrily in mid-air. This was not so annoying to the grey pup as one might suppose, because, though generally in a hurry, he always forgot his intended destination by the time he had taken three steps towards it, and therefore a sudden halt at the fourth seemed reasonable enough, and quite an agreeable diversion.
During the third week of his life, the weather being very fine, Finn, with the other pups, was treated to long sun-baths in a little fenced-in square of gravel which was covered with deodorized sawdust. These sun-baths were extremely good for the pups, and provided pleasant periods of rest and relaxation for the foster-mothers, who, though never allowed to see each other, were each within smelling distance of the pups, one upon one side and one on the other.
A huge dry bullock's shin-bone was put into the sun-bath, on a piece of matting, and this was a source of great interest to the pups, whose little white teeth were now as sharp as needles; a fact known only too well to their respective foster-mothers. Finn's favourite amusement was to lie straddled along this bone, and defy the other pups to touch it. He would give hard-breathing little snorts which he meant for growls, when one of the other pups began to nuzzle the bone; and, at times, these snorts would be vehement enough to make him lose his balance and roll helplessly off the bone on to the ground. Then the other three pups would straddle across his tubby body and snort defiance at him, each with a paw planted victoriously in his protuberant stomach or on his broad chest.
On Finn's twenty-first morning he spent the better part of half an hour in the lap of the Mistress of the Kennels, learning to lap warm milk and water. First of all he learned to suck the milky tip of the Mistress's little finger. Then, gradually, his nose was made to follow the little finger-tip into the milk; and, one way and another, he consumed during that first lesson about a tablespoonful of milk. In the afternoon he was kept for perhaps two and a half hours from the foster-mother, and then he, with the other pups, made great progress in the art of lapping; though they were all glad to approach the feeding question in a more serious and practical manner on being returned to their foster-mothers. Still, they had learned something, and the succeeding lessons of each following day brought quick familiarity and facility. In fact, the trouble with Finn, after two or three days, was that, in his lusty eagerness for nourishment, he generally risked the suicide's end by stumbling forward and plunging his whole face in the milk. His one notion of a safeguard against this danger was to plant one, or both, of his tubby fore-legs in the dish, a course which always brought him rebuke from the Mistress of the Kennels.
Toward the end of the fourth week these lessons in lapping became real meals, and the milk so consumed was always fortified with a thickening of some cereal rich in phosphates, besides minute doses of precipitated phosphate of lime, intended to stiffen the gristly leg-bones of these heavy pups, and increase bone development. The foster-mothers had been taking this, and communicating it in their milk, all along. This was the period in which the maternal feelings of the foster-mothers were submitted to the most severe strain. Finn's milk-white teeth, and his toe-nails, too, were sharp as pins, and used with great strength and vigour. Naturally, he entertained no unkind feelings for his loving little foster-mother; but, from sheer ignorance and riotous good living, he gave her a good deal of pain. Some dog-mothers would have warned him about this pretty sharply; but not so the little sheep-dog. She never even growled when, after feeding till he could feed no more, the insolent grey whelp would pound and paw at her soft dugs, and tug at them with his sharp teeth in sheer wantonness, till they were a network of red scars and scratches. The most the gentle, plebeian little mother would do would be to lie flat, after a while, to protect her dugs--and that for the puppy's own sake--a movement which always brought Finn galumphing over her shoulder to bite her ears and paw her nose, and otherwise seek to provoke breaches of the peace. A riotous, overbearing, disorderly rascal was Finn at this stage.
On the morning which ended Finn's fifth week in the world, all the pups were solemnly weighed in the kitchen scales, which were brought into the coach-house for that purpose. The Master stood by with a note-book, and these are the weights he recorded:--
Fawn bitch 10 3/4 lbs.