When one has reached a certain age time seems to go very fast. Then, also, one begins to understand the meaning of such terms as "the uncertainty of life," "changes," "loss of friends," "partings," "old times," etc., which ring sadly in the ears of grown-up folk.
After my first half at Eton, this universal experience became mine. There was never a holiday time that I did not find some change; and, too often, a loss to meet my return.
One of the first and bitterest was the death of Rubens.
I had been most anxious to get home, and yet somehow, in less high spirits than usual, which made it feel not unnatural that my father's face should be so unusually grave when he came to meet me.
"I have some very bad news for you, my dear boy," he said. "I fear, Regie, that poor Rubens is dying."
"He've been a-dying all day, sir," said the groom, when we stood at last by Rubens' side. "But he seems as if he couldn't go peaceable till you was come."
He seemed to be gone. The beautiful curls were limp and tangled. He lay on his side with his legs stretched out; his eyes were closed. But when I stooped over him and cried "Ruby!" his flabby ears pricked, and he began to struggle.
"It's a fit," said the groom.
But it was nothing of the kind. Rubens knew what he was about, and at last actually got on to his feet, when, after swaying feebly about for a moment, he staggered in my direction (he could not see) and literally fell into my arms, with one last wag of his dear tail.
"They say care killed the cat," said Mrs. Bundle, when I went up to the nursery, "but if it could cure a dog, my deary, your dog would have been alive now. I never see the Squire so put about since you had the fever. He was up at five o'clock this very morning, the groom says, putting stuff into the corners of its mouth with a silver teaspoon, and he've had all the cow doctors about to see him, and Dr. Gilpin himself he've been every day, and Mr. Andrewes the same. And I'd like to know, my deary, what more could be done for a sick Christian than the doctor and parson with him daily till he dies?"