“Foolish girl! it’s the most good-natured dog in the world. Here, he’ll give you his paw; come and shake hands with him.”
“I couldn’t do it, sir; I’m jest a-going to set the tea-things. I won’t, then, that’s flat,” exclaimed Rachel, waxing rebellious in the extremity of her terror, and backing rapidly towards the door.
“Yes, you will,” returned Lewis quietly; “every one does as I bid them.” And grasping her wrist, while he fixed his piercing glance sternly upon her, he led her up to the dog, and in spite of a faint show of resistance, a half-frightened, half-indignant “I dare say, indeed,” and a muttered hint of her conviction “that he had lately been accustomed to drive black nigger slaves in Guinea,” with an intimation “that he’d find white flesh and blood wouldn’t stand it, and didn’t ought to, neither,” succeeded in making her shake its great paw, and finally (as she perceived no symptoms of the humanivorous propensities with which her imagination had endowed it), pat its shaggy sides. “There, now you’ve made up your quarrel, Faust shall help you to carry my things upstairs,” said Lewis; and slinging a small travelling valise round the dog’s neck, he again addressed him in German, when the well-trained animal left the room with the astonished but no longer refractory Rachel.
“You must be a conjurer, Lewis,” exclaimed his mother, who had remained a silent but amused spectator of the foregoing scene. “Why, Rachel manages the whole house. Rose and I do exactly what she tells us, don’t we, Rose? What did you do to her? was it mesmerism?”
“I made use of one of the secrets of the mesmerist, certainly,” replied Lewis; “I managed her by the power of a strong will over a weak one.”
“I should hardly call Rachel’s a weak will,” observed Rose, with a quiet smile.
“You must confess, at all events, mine is a stronger,” replied Lewis. “When I consider it necessary to carry a point, I usually find some way of doing it; it was necessary for the sake of Faust’s well-being to manage Rachel, and I did so.”