“HE TRIES VERY HARD TO LOOK PLEASANT”
Roy has many tastes and feelings which are in entire sympathy with those of his master. He cannot get out of a hammock unless he falls out; and he is never so miserable as when Mrs. Butts comes over from the Eastkill Valley to clean house. Mrs. Butts piles all the sitting-room furniture on the front piazza, and then she scrubs the sitting-room floor, and neither Roy nor his master, so long as Mrs. Butts [p 81]
has control, can enter the sitting-room for a bone or a book. And they do not like it, although they like Mrs. Butts.
Roy has his faults; but his evil, as a rule, is wrought by want of thought rather than by want of heart. He shows his affection for his friends by walking under their feet and getting his own feet stepped on, or by sitting so close to their chairs that they rock on his tail. He has been known to hold two persons literally spellbound for minutes, with his tail under the rocker of one chair and both ears under the rocker of another one. Roy’s greatest faults are barking at horses’ heels and running away. This last is very serious, and often it is annoying; but there is always some excuse for it. He generally runs away to the Williamsons’, which is the summer home of his John and his Sarah; and where lodges Miss Flossie Burns, of Tannersville, his summer-girl. He knows that the Williamsons themselves do not want too much of him, no matter how John and Sarah and Miss Burns may feel on the subject; and he knows, too, that his own family wishes him to stay more at home; but, for all that, he runs away. He slips off at every opportunity. He pretends that he is only going down to the road to see what time it is, or that he is simply setting out for a blackberry or the afternoon’s mail; and when he is brought reluctantly home, he makes believe that he has [p 82]
forgotten all about it; and he naps on the top step, or in the door-way, in the most guileless and natural manner; and then, when nobody is looking, he dashes off, barking at any imaginary ox-cart, in wild, unrestrainable impetuosity, generally in the direction of the Williamsons’ cottage, and bringing up, almost invariably, under the Williamsons’ kitchen stove.
He would rather be shut up, in the Williamsons’ kitchen, with John and Sarah, and with a chance of seeing Flossie through the wire-screened door, than roam in perfect freedom over all his own domain.
He will bark at horses’ heels until he is brought home, some day, with broken ribs. Nothing but hard experience teaches Roy. There is no use of boxing his ears. That only hurts his feelings, and gives him an extra craving for sympathy. He licks the hand that licks him, until everyone of the five fingers is heartily ashamed of itself.
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“He is stone-deaf when he is asked to come back” | “He pretends he has forgotten all about it” |
“He poses willingly and steadily” | “He waits patiently about” |
Several autograph letters of Roy’s, in verse, in blank-verse, and in plain, hard prose, signed by his own mark—a fore paw dipped in an ink-bottle and stamped upon the paper—were sold by Mrs. Custer at varying prices during a fair for the benefit of the Onteora Chapel Fund, in 1896.
To one friend he wrote:
“My dear Blennie Beckwith,—You are a sneak; and a snip; and a snide; and a snob; and a snoozer; and a snarler; and a snapper; and a skunk. And I hate you; and I loathe you; [p 83]
and I despise you; and I abominate you; and I scorn you; and I repudiate you; and I abhor you; and I dislike you; and I eschew you; and I dash you; and I dare you.“Your affectionate friend,
“P. S.—I’ve licked this spot.
“R. H.
His Roy Hutton. mark. “Witness: Kate Lynch.”
