People of a low type, those whose imagination was bounded by menial similes, or persons of that too ready inclination to the humorous which fails to consider the possible injustice or unkindness that it may involve, had in Mop's infancy found a base pleasure in attaching to him such epithets as window-washer, scrubbing-brush, feather-duster, and footmuff. But these had not adhered. Loveliness had. It bade fair, at the time of our story, to outlive every other name.
The little dog had both friends and acquaintances on the street where the professor lived; and he watched for them from his cushion in the window, hours at a time. There was the cabman, the academic-looking cabman, who was the favorite of the faculty, and who hurrahed and snapped his whip at the Yorkshire as he passed by; there was the newsboy who brought the Sunday papers, and who whistled at Loveliness, and made faces, and called him Mop.
To-day there was a dark-faced man, a stranger, standing across the street, and regarding the professor's house with the unpleasant look of the foreign and ill-natured. This man had eyebrows that met in a straight, black line upon his forehead, and he wore a yellow jersey. The dog threw back his supercilious little head and barked at the yellow jersey severely. But at that moment he saw the carrier, who ran up the steps laughing, and brought a gumdrop in a sealed envelope addressed to Loveliness. There was a large mail that afternoon, including a pile of pamphlets and circulars of the varied description that haunts professors' houses. Kathleen, the parlor maid,—another particular friend of the terrier's—took the mail up to the study, but dropped one of the pamphlets on the stairs. The dog rebuked her carelessness (after he had given his attention to the carrier's gumdrop) by picking the pamphlet up and bringing it back to the window seat, where he opened and dog-eared it with a literary manner for a while, until suddenly he forgot it altogether, and dropped it on the floor, and sprang, bounding. For the dearest person in the world had called him in a whisper,—"Love-li-ness!" And the dearest face in the world appeared above him and melted into laughing tenderness. "Loveliness! Where's my Love-li-ness?"
A little girl had come into the room, a girl of between five and six years, but so small that one would scarcely have guessed her to be four,—a beautiful child, but transparent of coloring, and bearing in her delicate face the pathetic patience which only sick children, of all human creatures, ever show. She was exquisitely formed, but one little foot halted and stepped weakly on the thick carpet. Her organs of speech were perfect in mechanism, but often she did not speak quite aloud. Sometimes, on her weaker days, she carried a small crutch. They called her Adah.
She came in without her crutch that afternoon; she was feeling quite strong and happy. The little dog sprang to her heart, and she crooned over him, sitting beside him on the window seat and whispering in her plaintive voice: "Love-li-ness! I can't live wivout you anover minute, Loveliness! I can't live wivout you!"
She put her head down on the pearl-gray satin pillow with the cherry puppies, and the dog put his face beside hers. He was kept as sweet and clean as his little mistress, and he had no playfellow except herself, and never went away from home unless at the end of a gray satin ribbon leash. At all events, the two would occupy the same pillow, and all idle effort to struggle with this fact had ceased in the household. Loveliness sighed one of the long sighs of perfect content recognized by all owners and lovers of dogs as one of the happiest sounds in this sad world, and laid his cheek to hers quietly. He asked nothing more of life. He had forgotten the world and all that was therein. He looked no longer for the cabman, the newsboy, or the carrier, and the man with the eyebrows had gone away. The universe did not exist; he and she were together. Heaven had happened. The dog glanced through half-closed, blissful eyes at the yellow hair—"eighteen carats fine"—that fell against his silver bangs. His short ecstatic breath mingled with the gentle breathing of the child. She talked to him in broken rhapsodies. She called him quaint, pet names of her own,—"Dearness" and "Daintiness," "Mopsiness" and "Preciousness," and "Dearest-in-the-World," and who knew what besides? Only the angels who are admitted to the souls of children and the hearts of little dogs could have understood that interview.
No member of the professor's household ever interfered with the attachment between the child and the dog, which was set apart as one of the higher facts in the family life. Indeed, it had its own page of sacred history, which read on this wise:—
When Adah was a walking baby, two and a half years before the time of which we tell, the terrier was in the first proud flush of enthusiasm which an intelligent dog feels in the mastery of little feats and tricks. Of these he had a varied and interesting repertoire. His vocabulary, too, was large. At the date of our story it had reached one hundred and thirty words. It was juvenile and more limited at the time when the sacred page was written, but still beyond the average canine proficiency. Loveliness had always shown a genius for the English language. He could not speak it, but he tried harder than any other dog I ever knew to do so; and he grew to understand with ease an incredibly large part of the usual conversation of the family. It could never be proved that he followed—or did not follow—the professor of psychology in a discussion on the Critique of Pure Reason; but his mental grasp of ordinary topics was alert and logical. He sneezed when he was cold and wanted a window shut, and barked twice when his delicate china water-cup was empty. When the fire department rang by, or a stove in the house was left on draught too long, and he wished to call attention to the circumstance, he barked four times. Besides the commonplace accomplishments of turning somersaults, being a dead dog, sitting up to beg for things, and shaking hands, Loveliness had some attainments peculiar to himself.
One of these was in itself scientifically interesting. This luxurious, daintily fed little creature, who had never known an hour's want nor any deprivation that he could remember, led by the blind instinct of starving, savage ancestors skulking in forests where the claw and tooth of every living thing were against every other, conscientiously sought to bury, against future exigencies, any kind of food for which he had no appetite. The remnants of his dog biscuit, his saucer of weak tea, an unpalatable dinner, alike received the treatment given to the bare bone of his forefathers when it was driven into the ground.
Anything served the purpose of the earth,—the rough, wild earth of whose real nature the house pet knew so little. A newspaper, a glove, a handkerchief, a sheet of the professor's manuscript, a hearth brush, or a rug would answer. Drag these laboriously, and push them perseveringly to their places! Cover the saucer or the plate from sight with a solemn persistence that the starving, howling ancestor would have respected! Thus Loveliness recognized the laws of heredity. But the corners of rugs were, and remained, the favorite burying sod.