"I have read this book conscientiously—footnotes and everything—for an hour," he said; he was deliberate and there was an air of finality in his tone. "I find that I have completed five pages—the meaning of which has since escaped me. Now, as there are four hundred pages in this volume and as many, presumably, in every one of the other seventeen, it will take me one thousand four hundred and forty hours—sixty days, or two months—to 'familiarize' myself with the whole set. If we sit here night and day for the next two months without taking a second off to eat, sleep, or bathe, we shall have glanced through this superficial pamphlet and pleased the old man."
"I think it has stopped raining," I replied.
We have a new inmate at our house. I woke up one morning hearing such a strange, wild, sad little song coming from my study. At first I thought I must have dreamed it, but even after I sat up in bed and knew I was awake, the sound continued. It was the queerest, most barbaric little refrain, all in a minor key with words I could n't make out, and was the sort of thing one could imagine a "native" of some kind crooning to himself in the middle of a rice-field. I listened to it awhile—almost afraid to go in; but when it began to grow louder, and then was interrupted from time to time by the most horrible gurgling and strangling noises, I jumped up and opened my study door. At the same moment Berrisford and Mrs. Chester appeared at the other door. In the middle of the room was a bristling brown thing with pointed ears and muzzle and shrewd little eyes. It had absurdly big feet and looked like a baby wolf. Something that seemed to be a piece of leather was dangling from its mouth. Berrisford threw himself on the floor, exclaiming: "My darling—my Saga—what is it—speak to me!" and pulled gently at the piece of leather. The brute rolled his eyes, gagged a little, and let him have it. "Why, it's the thumb of a glove," Berrisford said, holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he dess tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin button wivetted on uzzer end, so he tould n't," he added to the animal.
"That doesn't seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in Berrisford's hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very expensive gloves I had bought two days before.
"Heavens!—do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm. "Do you think it will hurt him?"
"Of course he ate it. I don't see it anywhere, and they were both together on that chair. I hope it will hurt him," I said.
"It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who 's never been in a house before in all his life," Berrisford muttered resentfully.
"Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed.
"It isn't outlandish—it's Icelandic," Berrisford replied. "He came all the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack. I bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a dollar—didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he did. And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on de way up—didn't he, darlin'? And dat horrid baggage man was dess crazy 'tause he did n't know where to put off any baggage and had to delay de twain like evvysing." Berrisford became quite incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door.
I don't think it's right for any one man to inflict a whole community with a beast like Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several times; but he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more, than any one. Do you ever hear me complain when he wallows in the mud and then snuggles up in my bed? Was there any outcry when he ate my gloves and my patent leather shoes and my Russia leather notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of 'Paradise Lost'? Did I make a violent scene—the way you and Duggie do every day—when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before the people came—behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten thirty-six perfectly delicious lettuce sandwiches? You might at least admit that you think he 's just as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to follow you through the Square—with everybody turning to look—you know you do. Does n't he, mon tou-tou, mon bébé, mon chien de race?"