but as soon as we reached the cool cover of dusk, I would lift the now crouching, anxious puppy to his four feet and snap on his new leash.
His troubled eyes would well over with expostulatory questions:
"Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do?"
"We're going to walk, Little Stick-in-the-Mud. Come on!"
And thus Hamlet, "with much forcing of his disposition," would undergo the daily constitutional, which he converted into a genuine gymnastic exercise for us both by pulling back on the leash with all his considerable strength, protesting:
"It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue."
In this ignoble fashion I would drag him along for a mile or so of the least frequented road, until he would suddenly fix his slender legs and refuse to be budged:
"Where wilt thou lead me? speak;
I'll go no further."