“Do you live all alone?” I asked him.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “I have two dogs. But I cannot bring the other one with me. He makes a continual disturbance, leaps and fidgets so much that he never gets fat and any one would think to see him that I don’t give him anything to eat. As a matter of fact, you see, I cannot show him without being ashamed of him. People would suppose that I was allowing him to die of hunger. Anyway I need only one dog here. As for the other I leave him at the house, where he serves as watch dog.”
“Oh, you have a house,” I said.
“That is to say, I have a room, I call it my house.”
“Who does your cooking for you? Who makes the fire at your house?”
“I do,” he replied. “I light a match and then by the crackling of the wood I know whether it has caught.”
“How do you clean your vegetables?”
“Oh, that is easy. I can tell by the feeling when the potatoes are well peeled.”
“And the fruits and the salad?”
“Oh, that is something we do not have very often.”