As for the dogs, they seemed to feel that they could not possibly get enough of the snow. The exuberance of great Oscar’s joy when he went out with his mister for a walk, the first thing every morning, was highly comical to witness. Out for a walk, did I say? Nay, dear reader, that word but poorly expresses the nature of Oscar’s pedal progression. It was not a walk, but a glorious compound of dance, scamper, race, run; gallop, and gambol. Had you been ever so old it would have made you feel young again to behold him. He knew while Allan was dressing that he meant to go out, and begin at once to exhibit signs of impatience. He would yawn and stretch himself and wriggle and shake; then he would open his mouth and endeavour to round a sentence in real verbal English, and, failing in this, fall back upon dog language pure and simple. Or he would stand as steady as a pointer, looking up at Allan with his beautiful head turned on one side, and his mouth a little open, just sufficiently so to show the tip of his bright pink tongue, and his brown eyes would speak to his master. “Couldn’t you,” the dog would seem to ask—“couldn’t you get on your coat a little—oh, ever so little!—faster? What can you want with a muffler? I don’t wear a muffler. And now you are looking for your fur cap, and there it is right before your very eyes!”
“And,” the dog would add, “I dare say we are out at last,” and he would hardly give his mister time to open the companion door for him.
But once over the side, “Hurrah!” he would seen to cry, then away he would bound, and away, and away, and away, straight ahead as crow could fly, through the snow and through the snow, which rose around him in feathery clouds, till he appeared but a little dark speck in the distance. This race straight ahead was meant to get rid of his super-extra steam. Having expended this, back he would come with a rush and a run, make pretence to jump his master down, but dive past him at the very last moment. Then he would gambol in front of his master in such a daft and comical fashion that made Allan laugh aloud; and, seeing his master laughing, Oscar would laugh too, showing such a double regiment of white, flashing, pearly teeth, that, with the quickness of the dog’s motions, they seemed to begin at his lips and go right away down both sides of him as far as the tail.
Hurroosh! hurroosh! Each exclamation, reader, is meant to represent a kind of a double-somersault, which I verily believe Oscar invented himself. He performed it by leaping off the ground, bending sideways, and going right round like a top, without touching the snow, with a spring like that of a five-year-old salmon getting over a weir.
Hurroosh! hurroosh!
Then Allan would make a grab at his tail.
“Oh, that’s your game!” Oscar would say; “then down you go!”
And down Allan would roll, half-buried in the powdery snow, and not be able to get up again for laughing; then away Oscar would rush, wildly round and round in a complete circle, having a radius of some fifty yards, with Allan McGregor on his broad back for a centre.
After half-an-hour of such furious fun, is it any wonder that Allan and Oscar returned to breakfast with appetites like hunters?
The Skye terrier enjoyed the snow quite as much in his own little way as Oscar did, and, indeed, he used to live in under it a goodly part of his time every day. He in a manner buried himself alive. Plunket, the mastiff, on the other hand, was always in the habit of taking his pleasures in a quiet and dignified manner.