For one thing she was good to her pug. Upon that extraordinarily repulsive and overfed animal she lavished a great deal of affection. Yet mark the ingratitude of the canine race. How did that misshapen, dumb, soulless, pampered beast, whose figurehead was like a gargoyle, and whose eyes were so swollen with baked meats that they could scarcely revolve, requite the constant care and caresses of his mistress? Why, by getting fat. There could be no doubt about it that Ponto was getting fat.
Almost the first thing the old woman did upon what was destined to prove one of the most memorable days of a long and not particularly useful life, was to issue an edict. It was to the effect that John, the second footman, was to exercise Ponto for an hour every morning in Hyde Park. The manner in which John, who himself consumed more than was good for a human being, received the edict is no concern of ours.
It was about a quarter to two—at least it was getting near luncheon-time—that the rare event happened from which springs the germ of this history. How it came to pass will never be known. It is a problem to baffle the most learned doctors and the most expert psychologists. For at about a quarter to two, just as Miss Burden had returned from a visit to the circulating library, the occurrence happened. The old lady of Hill Street was visited by an Idea. To be sure it did not reveal itself immediately in that crude and startling guise. It had its processes to go through, like a cosmos or a tadpole, or any other natural phenomenon that burgeons into entity. The evolutions by which it attained to its fullness were in this wise.
“Where have you been, Burden?” said the old lady, fixing a cold eye upon the abashed blue-backed volume under the arm of her gentlewoman.
“I have been changing a novel at Mudie’s,” said Miss Burden.
“The usual rubbish, I suppose,” said the old woman, giving a grim turn to her countenance, which rendered that frontispiece an admirable composite of a hawk and a hanging judge.
“Lord Cheriton said it was the best novel he had read for years,” said Miss Burden with the gentle air of one who reveres authority.
“Humph,” said the old lady. “Whatever Cheriton is, he has taste at least. Give it to me.”
Miss Burden handed the blue-backed volume to her mistress. The old lady opened it warily, lest she should come too abruptly upon a fine moral sentiment.
“Man uses good English,” she said suspiciously. “Reminds one of the man Disraeli before he made a fool of himself in politics.”