Her bed in the hall was hardly good enough for such an epoch in her life, so the whole litter, with the proud mother in their midst, was safely deposited in the middle of our bed, where we paid court to this royalty. My husband went over each little shapeless body, and called my special attention to fine points, that, for the life of me, dog-lover as I was, I could not discover in the pulpy, silken-skinned little rolls. As he took them up, one by one, Ginnie understood every word of praise he uttered. After all of these little blind atoms had been returned to their maternal, and the General had congratulated the mother on a restaurant where, he said, the advertisement of "warm meals at all hours" was for once true, he immediately set about tormenting Eliza. Her outraged spirit had suffered often, to see the kingly Byron reposing his head on the pillow, but the General said, "We must get her up-stairs, for there will be war in the camp now."
Eliza came peacefully up the stairs into our room, but her eyes blazed when she saw Ginnie. She asked her usual question, "Did I come way off down in this here no 'count country to wash white counterpanes for dogs?" At each speech the General said something to Ginnie in reply, to harrow her up more and more, and at last she had to give in and laugh at some of his drolleries. She recalls to me now her recollection: "Miss Libbie, do you mind how the Ginnel landed Ginnie and her whole brood of pups in the middle of the bed, and then had the 'dacity to send for me? But, oh! it was perfectly heartrendin', the way he would go on about his dogs when they was sick."
And we both remembered, when one of these little puppies of our beloved Ginnie was ill, how he walked the floor half the night, holding, rubbing, trying to soothe the suffering little beast. And in spite of his medical treatment—for he kept the dog-book on his desk, and ransacked it for remedies—and notwithstanding the anointing and the coddling, two died.
After Eliza had come down from her rampagious state, she was invited to take notice of what a splendid family Ginnie had. Then all the staff and the ladies came up to call. It was a great occasion for Ginnie, but she bore her honors meekly, and offered her paw, as was her old custom, to each new-comer, as if prepared for congratulations. When they were old enough to run about and bark, Ginnie took up her former habit of following at the General's heels; and as he crossed the yard to the stables there was so absurd a procession that I could not help laughing at the commanding officer, and question if he himself thought it added to the dignity of his appearance, to see the court-like trail of mother and five puppies in his wake. The independence of the chief was too inborn to be laughed to scorn about appearances, and so he continued to go about, as long as these wee toddlers followed their mother in quest of supplies. I believe there were twenty-three dogs at this time about our house, most of them ours. Even our father Custer accepted a bulky old cur as a gift. There was no manner of doubt about the qualities that had influenced our persecuted parent in selecting this one from the numerous dogs offered him by his farmer friends. His choice was made neither on account of breeding nor speed. The cur was selected solely as a watch-dog. He was all growl and bark, and as devotion is not confined, fortunately, to the canines of exalted paternity, the lumbering old fellow was faithful. Nothing describes him better than some lines from "The Outside Dog in the Fight;" for though he could threaten with savage growls, and, I fancy, when aggravated, could have set savage teeth in the enemy of his master, he trotted beside our father's horse very peacefully, unmindful of the quarrelsome members of our canine family, who bristled up to him, inviting an encounter merely to pass the time.
"You may sing of your dog, your bottom dog,
Or of any dog that you please;
I go for the dog, the wise old dog,
That knowingly takes his ease,
And wagging his tail outside the ring,
Keeping always his bone in sight,
Cares not a pin, in his wise old head,
For either dog in the fight.
"Not his is the bone they are fighting for,
And why should my dog sail in,
With nothing to gain but a certain chance
To lose his own precious skin?
There may be a few, perhaps, who fail
To see it in quite this light;
But when the fur flies I had rather be
The outside dog in the fight."
Affairs had come to such a pass that our father took his yellow cur into his bedroom at night. It was necessary to take prompt, precautionary measures to keep his sons from picking the lock of the door and descending on him in their marauding expeditions. The dog saw comparatively little of outside life, for, as time rounded, it became necessary for the old gentleman to shut up his body-guard daytimes also, as he found in his absence these same sons and their confederates had a fashion of dropping a little "nig" over the transom, with directions to fetch back to them anything he could lay his hands on. I have seen them at the door while our father was away, trying to soothe and cajole the old guardian of his master's effects into terms of peace. After all overtures were declined, and the little bedroom was filled up with bark and growl, the invaders contented themselves with tossing all sorts of missiles over the transom, which did not sweeten the enraged dog's temper. Nor did it render our father's bed as downy as it might have been.
I find myself recalling with a smile the perfectly satisfied manner in which this ungainly old dog was taken out by his venerable owner on our rides over the country. Father Custer had chosen him, not for his beauty, but as his companion, and finding him so successful in this one capacity, he was just as serene over his possession as ever his sons were with their high-bred hunters. The dog looked as if he were a make-up from all the rough clay that was discarded after modeling the sleek, high-stepping, springy, fleet-footed dogs of our pack. His legs were massive, while his cumbersome tail curled over his plebeian back in a tight coil, until he was tired—then, and only then, did it uncurl. The droop of his head was rendered even more "loppy" by the tongue, which dropped outside the sagging jaw. But for all that, he lumbered along, a blotch of ungainly yellow, beside our splendid thoroughbreds; he was never so tired that he could not understand the voice of a proud old man, who assured his retrograde sons that he "would match his Bowser 'gainst any of their new-fangled, unreliable, highfalutin lot."
It was a strange sight, though, this one plebeian among patricians. Our horses were fine, our father got good speed and some style out of his nag, our dogs leaped over the country like deer, and there in the midst, panting and faithfully struggling to keep up, was the rough, uncouth old fellow, too absorbed in endeavoring not to be left behind to realize that he was not all that a dog could finally become, after generations of training and breeding had done its refining work.