[p 76]
Roy is quite as much of a fighter as was any one of the other dogs; but he is a little more discriminating in his likes and his dislikes. He fights all the dogs in Tannersville; he fights the Drislers’ Gyp almost every time he meets him; he fights the Beckwiths’ Blennie only when either one of them trespasses on the domestic porch of the other (Blennie, who is very pretty, looks like old portraits of Mrs. Browning, with the curls hanging on each side of the face); and Roy never fights Laddie Pruyn nor Jack Ropes at all. Jack Ropes is the hero whom he worships, the beau ideal to him of everything a dog should be. He follows Jack in all respects; and he pays Jack the sincere flattery of imitation. Jack, an Irish setter, is a thorough gentleman in form, in action, and in thought. Some years Roy’s senior, he submits patiently to the playful capers of the younger dog; and he even accepts little nips at his legs or his ears. It is pleasant to watch the two friends during an afternoon walk. Whatever Jack does, that does Roy; and Jack knows it, and he gives Roy hard things to do. He leads Roy to the summit of high rocks, and then he jumps down, realizing that Roy is too small to take the leap. But he always waits until Roy, yelping with mortification, comes back by the way they both went. He wades through puddles up to his own knees, but over Roy’s head; and then he trots cheerfully away, far in advance, while Roy has [p 77]
to stop long enough to shake himself dry. But it was Roy’s turn once! He traversed a long and not very clean drain, which was just large enough to give free passage to his own small body; and Jack went rushing after. Jack got through; but he was a spectacle to behold. And there are creditable eye-witnesses who are ready to testify that Roy took Jack home, and sat on the steps, and laughed, while Jack was being washed.
ROY
Each laughed on the wrong side of his mouth, however—Jack from agony, and Roy from sympathy—when Jack, a little later, had his unfortunate adventure with the loose-quilled, fretful, Onteora porcupine. It nearly cost Jack his life and his reason; and for some time he was a helpless, suffering invalid. Doctors were called in, chloroform was administered, and many delicate surgical operations were performed before Jack was on his feet again; and for the while each tail drooped. Happily for Roy, he did not go to the top of the Hill-of-the-Sky that unlucky day, and so he escaped the porcupine. But Roy does not care much for porcupines, anyway, and he never did. Other dogs are porcupiney enough for him!
Roy’s association with Jack Ropes is a liberal education to him in more ways than one. Jack is so big and so strong and so brave, and so gentle withal, and so refined in manners and intellectual in mind, that Roy, even if he would, could not resist the healthful [p 78]
influence. Jack never quarrels except when Roy quarrels; and whether Roy is in the right or in the wrong, the aggressor or the attacked (and generally he begins it), Jack invariably interferes on Roy’s behalf, in a good-natured, big-brother, what-a-bother sort of way that will not permit Roy to be the under dog in any fight. Part of Roy’s dislike of Blennie—Blennie is short for Blenheim—consists in the fact that while Blennie is nice enough in his way, it is not Roy’s way. Blennie likes to sit on laps, to bark out of windows—at a safe distance. He wears a little sleigh-bell on his collar. Under no circumstances does he play follow-my-leader, as Jack does. He does not try to do stunts; and, above all, he does not care to go in swimming.
The greatest event, perhaps, in Roy’s young life was his first swim. He did not know he could swim. He did not know what it was to swim. He had never seen a sheet of water larger than a road-side puddle or than the stationary wash-tubs of his own laundry at home. He would have nothing to do with the Pond, at first, except for drinking purposes; and he would not enter the water until Jack went in, and then nothing would induce him to come out of the water—until Jack was tired. His surprise and his pride at being able to take care of himself in an entirely unknown and unexplored element were very great. But—there is always a But in Roy’s case—but [p 79]
when he swam ashore the trouble began. Jack, in a truly Chesterfieldian manner, dried himself in the long grass on the banks. Roy dried himself in the deep yellow dust of the road—a medium which was quicker and more effective, no doubt, but not so pleasant for those about him; for he was so enthusiastic over his performance that he jumped upon everybody’s knickerbockers, or upon the skirts of everybody’s gown, for the sake of a lick at somebody’s hand and a pat of appreciation and applause.
Another startling and never-to-be-forgotten experience of Roy’s was his introduction to the partridge. He met the partridge casually one afternoon in the woods, and he paid no particular attention to it. He looked upon it as a plain barn-yard chicken a little out of place; but when the partridge whirled and whizzed and boomed itself into the air, Roy put all his feet together, and jumped, like a bucking horse, at the lowest estimate four times as high as his own head. He thought it was a porcupine! He had heard a great deal about porcupines, although he had never seen one; and he fancied that that was the way porcupines always went off!
Roy likes and picks blackberries—the green as well as the ripe; and he does not mind having his portrait painted. Mr. Beckwith considers Roy one of the best models he ever had. Roy does not have to be posed; he poses himself, willingly and patiently, [p 80]
so long as he can pose himself very close to his master; and he always places his front legs, which he knows to be his strong point, in the immediate foreground. He tries very hard to look pleasant, as if he saw a chipmunk at the foot of a tree, or as if he thought Mr. Beckwith was squeezing little worms of white paint out of little tubes just for his amusement. And if he really does see a chipmunk on a stump, he rushes off to bark at the chipmunk; and then he comes back and resumes his original position, and waits for Mr. Beckwith to go on painting again. Once in awhile, when he feels that Mr. Beckwith has made a peculiarly happy remark, or an unusually happy stroke of the brush, Roy applauds tumultuously and loudly with his tail, against the seat of the bench or the side of the house. Roy has two distinct wags—the perpendicular and the horizontal; and in his many moments of enthusiasm he never neglects to use that particular wag which is likely to make the most noise.