He has a great sense of humour and of the ridiculous; but if you say to him, “Robert, come here,” he then approaches very gravely indeed.
“What’s up!” he seems to say, “that I am being called Robert? Have I done anything wrong, I wonder?”
Again, if you call him Bobbie, he expects to be patted, caressed, and made much of.
So he has a name for all weathers, as a sailor would say.
“Eily” is the name of a splendid collie of mine. In the course of years her name became Eily-Biley. She prefers this. There is love and affection and pats and pieces of cake, and all kinds of pleasantness associated with the name. Eily is simply her business name, as it were, and there are times when she is called “Bile” emphatically, and on these occasions she knows she has been doing something wrong and is to be scolded, so she at once throws herself at my feet, makes open confession, and sues for forgiveness.
“Yes, dear master,” she seems to say; “it is quite true, I did chase the cock, and I did tree the cat. They did provoke me, but I will try not to do so again.”
I have a great many wild-bird friends. There are several sparrows visit me every day, at and in my wigwam, or garden study. One comes to name. That name is “Weekie!” I heard his little wife call him “Weekie” one day, so the name has stuck to him. We have been friends for years, Weekie and I. He is bold and pert, but affectionate. He roosts in winter among the creepers on my wigwam, and steals morsels of my manuscripts to help in building his nest in summer.
So there is something in pet names at all events. I daresay most of my readers would think that “Dumps” was a queer name to give a pony. Well, and so it is; but the name grew, for he was originally Dick; from Dick to Dickie the transition is natural. “But how about the ‘Dumps’?” you may ask. Well, Dickie belonged to a good old country parson that I knew, who lived some years ago in one of the wildest glens of our Scottish Highlands. If this parson was not, like some one else, “Passing rich with forty pounds a year,” he managed to live and support his family upon not much more than double that sum. But he had a very thrifty wife, and his children were each and all of them as good as they looked, and that is saying a deal. They possessed the kind hearts that are worth more than coronets, and the simple faith that is better far than Norman blood. So poor though Mr Mack, let us call him, was, his home was a very happy one. Mrs Mack rather prided herself on her cookery, and her skill in the art was fully appreciated by all the family—including Dickie the pony. But what Dick particularly loved was a morsel of suet dumpling.
The dining-room window looked over Dick’s field, and was entirely surrounded with lovely climbing roses, as indeed was all the cottage, for great yellow roses could be gathered even through the attic windows, and they actually trailed around the chimneys.
In spring and summer the dining-room window used to be left open, and Dickie would station himself there, and wait with equine patience for his morsel of dumpling. Sometimes he got two or three pieces, and even then would have the audacity to ask for a fourth help. “It is so nice,” he would appear to say, with a low, comical kind of a nicker. “It is dee-licious. Do you know what I’ll do, if I don’t have more dumpling? I’ll crop the rose-leaves.”