All went well until the sermon. The curate was just going up into the pulpit when I saw him suddenly start back, very nearly falling over as he did so, and then beckon to one of the choir-boys. An animated discussion followed, then the boy, looking somewhat pale, mounted the steps, dived down into the pulpit, and, to my horror, I saw Chang being dragged out, much against his will, looking extremely cross, but otherwise perfectly regardless of the commotion he was causing.
When he had been safely marched out through the vestry, and the door firmly closed, the service was resumed, but I noticed that the sermon was somewhat dogmatic that morning. A thousand pardons!
THE LITTLE HOUSE IN THE FOREST (p. 139).
On investigation, I discovered that Chang, as soon as my back was turned, had followed me quietly at some little distance, and, entering the church unperceived by the vestry door, decided to take his morning nap on the pulpit mat until it should be time to escort me home.
The next morning I received a polite note from the curate asking me kindly to abstain in future from bringing my dog to church, as, although he admired him immensely, he thought a dog a somewhat disturbing element on such occasions. In future, on Sunday mornings, before our departure to church, the offender was firmly secured to the leg of the kitchen table, and we had no more startling apparitions to distract us.
I think life would have been quite ideal in our summer quarters at Karuizawa had it not been for that odious black chow that lived in the other little house in the forest, just across the stream down below.
He was not to be compared to Chang in beauty, and, I must confess, in a tooth-to-tooth fight, Chang invariably got the worst of it. After a daily encounter on neutral grounds, affairs reached a crisis when, one day, in a fit of bravado, my hero ventured into the enemy’s camp, and a terrific and sanguinary battle followed. In one last, desperate struggle, they fell together into the gold-fish pond, and were only rescued from a watery grave by the gallant exertions of the black chow’s master, who dragged them out dripping, half dead, but still locked in a deadly embrace, only to be loosened by the repeated application of buckets of water and finally pepper on their respective noses.
The appearance of my friend for the next few days resembled that of a victim to mumps, combined with a black and swollen eye and a somewhat mangy condition of his naturally glossy coat.
Even that, alas! did not cure Chang’s pugilistic tendencies. How often has he returned home a sadder, though I fear not a wiser, dog! On one occasion with but three sound legs; on another, with a hole the size of a bullet-wound in his throat from a mastiff’s fang. But enough of these painful reflections.