The delighted dog rushed backwards, barking furiously, and tried to throw up paving stones with its hind legs. That frightened a nursemaid who was wheeling a perambulator, and then it was that I entered into the proceedings. Seated on the edge of the pavement, with a perambulator on one side of me and a howling baby on the other, I told that dog what I thought of him.
Forgetful that I was in a foreign land—that he might not understand me—I told it him in English, I told it him at length, I told it very loud and clear. He stood a yard in front of me, listening to me with an expression of ecstatic joy I have never before or since seen equalled on any face, human or canine. He drank it in as though it had been music from Paradise.
“Where have I heard that song before?” he seemed to be saying to himself, “the old familiar language they used to talk to me when I was young?”
He approached nearer to me; there were almost tears in his eyes when I had finished.
“Say it again!” he seemed to be asking of me. “Oh! say it all over again, the dear old English oaths and curses that in this God-forsaken land I never hoped to hear again.”
I learnt from the young lady that he was an English-born fox-terrier. That explained everything. The foreign dog does not do this sort of thing. The foreigner is born good: that is why we hate him.