Loki will not believe that the Manchu masters have fallen in China ‹of course it is not from us that he has heard these distressing rumours›, so he still demands as his right the best silk eiderdowns to lie upon, satin for his cushions, grilled kidney for his breakfast, freshly poured water in his bowl every time he wants to drink; and expects immediate attention at lunch and dinner-time, play-time, “bye-bye” time, and all the other times when he thinks he would like his chest rubbed. He sits up and waves his paws with imperious gesture; or else rolls over on his back and puts them together in an attitude of prayer. He had not at first much oriental calm about him. Indeed, when he first came to us his one desire was to play with every living thing he saw, from a cow to a chicken; but the cow misunderstood and ran at him, and the chicken misunderstood and ran away. The poor puppy was perplexed and wounded. He always believed every new Teddy bear toy to be alive at first, and would receive it in a rapture of tail-wagging and nuzzling kisses, until what time, it dawning upon him that Teddy was a senseless fraud, he set himself to shake and worry it like a little fury. Now he is older and wiser. He pretends not to see cows, and condemns chickens; he will growl at a strange dog, and bite and shake a new toy the very first day. Thus, alas, do years make a cynic of the young idealist!
LOKI’S OWN ANIMALS
He only plays with his own animals. These are: Susan, the Butler’s dog, and Arabella, the Lavroch setter, a long, lovely, lithe, foolish creature, whose surname is Stewart, having come to Villino Loki out of far Scotland from a distinguished member of that Royal clan. Arabella, who is ten times the size of Loki, turns him over and over, tramples on him, nibbles and licks him till he is unspeakable. He will leap at her nose, hang on to one of her long flapping ears, race up and down the slopes and round and round the green terraces, till they both collapse, and their tongues hang out of their laughing mouths, seeming to flicker with their panting breath, and become as long as the tongues of dragons on old manuscripts.
A matter to be noticed is that they never play in their walks with us across the moors—apparently that is against dog etiquette—but they will lie in wait for each other at the garden gate on the way home, and the fun and the pouncing and growling jocosities begin the instant they are inside.
Susan doesn’t play with the other animals, though she exercises an irresistible fascination upon every dog that comes within a mile of her. She has a kind of Jane Eyre charm, we suppose, for it is not at first visible to the naked eye. She always does remind us of a small elderly German governess, for she is squat, undemonstrative, and eminently—oh, eminently!—respectable. She is a fox-terrier. She has, however, one terrible weakness. Her only joy is to have stones thrown for her. She is not, therefore, an agreeable person to take out for a walk, for she will get right under your feet, dig up a stone, point at it, and bark, “Throw, throw!” with a shrill persistence that goes through your head. And if you are weak-minded enough to yield, then indeed you are undone. You will be kept throwing till you wish her in the Dog Star. She will scratch up stones till her paws are raw. This we think a great defect, but Loki sees no flaw in her.
CELLARERS YOUNG, CELLARERS OLD
When Susan’s Butler first came to us, we had suffered acutely from butlers young and butlers old, butlers bashful and butlers bold—all of whom drank steadily. One nearly murdered his Buttons. Another, engaged by correspondence, vouched for by the agency, announcing his years as forty-five, arrived huge, decrepit, asthmatic; almost, if not quite, qualified for an old-age pension. The eight o’clock dinner he found it impossible to serve before nine; and then that ceremony became a perfect torture of dazed crawling, enlivened by stertorous breathing, for which asthma and chronic alcoholism disputed responsibility. When the Master of the House, who is very tender-hearted, intimated that he thought that, for the good of the newcomer’s health, they had better part with the utmost celerity, the veteran assented resignedly with the husky gasp peculiar to him.