“Aye, you should see him run!” cried Mrs. Wyndwood. “It makes one feel young again to see him scampering up hill and down dale. Even a mudhill delights him; it reminds him of his native moors, doesn’t it, Roy, dear?”
Roy stared at her with large, unblinking eyes.
“But we are not dressed well enough to go out with him now,” said Olive. “I told you what a snob he was, Mr. Strang. Shake paws with the gentleman, dear. He’s smart enough even for your tastes. See how he likes you, Mr. Strang. If he didn’t, the skin over his dear old nose would snarl up into gathers and puckers and frills. There! That’s his favorite attitude—on his hind-legs, with his fore-paws placably on a beloved lap. Now he is happy. How simple life is for him! Lucky dog!”
“Ah, you forget that he, too, has his ideal, his unachieved aspiration,” said Mrs. Wyndwood. “The disappointment of his life is that he can’t catch birds. He snaps at everything that soars in air—even insects; it exasperates him to find things hovering mockingly overhead in defiance of gravity. He sits on his haunches and wails over the emptiness of life.”
Matthew Strang gave Roy a kindlier pat. But the creature was still stretched on the tapis of conversation, and Olive proceeded to a whimsical account of the partition of Roy between Eleanor and herself, as joint house-keepers. Since they could not bisect the collie, he belonged to each on alternate days, so that if he were lost again, the onus would rest on the mistress for the day.
By this time the painter could hardly refrain from kicking the dog, and when Mrs. Wyndwood added that Roy was only eighteen months old, he rose to go.
Mrs. Wyndwood’s expression changed.
“You’re not running away yet?” she said.
“I must,” he murmured, his ill-humor abating under the sweet seriousness of her face.
“Why, you haven’t talked to us at all—we want to hear more about technique.”