These mule-birds die generally very suddenly; and Gypsy died without apparent sign of illness at about the age of ten years.
VIII
A FAITHFUL FRIEND
WE were called into my mother’s room one day, and shown a hamper which had just arrived. The hamper was strangely agitated, like that hasty-pudding in which Tom Thumb sheltered, and when it was opened out rolled a puppy! It was a collie puppy, long haired, black, with tan cheeks, a white tip to his tail, white collar and paws, and wholly fascinating.
It was really a charming puppy; at present too young to sin; too young to do anything but roll about and be petted.
He was named Watch, “for,” said the friend who gave him, “he is a sheep dog, and you are a pastoral family”—a very pretty reason, but I think she was also influenced by the horlogerie of our namesake.
Time passed, and Watch grew older and uglier. His neck lengthened, until his ears looked like ridiculous ornaments on the top of it, his legs grew long and lanky, his coat grew thin, and he grew naughty. He did not indeed eat up slippers, which is the favourite employment of story-book puppies, but he did pull most of a cold Sunday dinner on to the lawn, lick the butter out of the dish, and leave joints of mutton and beef on the grass. And he had another very original, reprehensible, natural impulse—he wished to garden. His method of gardening was to dig up saplings from a carefully-planted hedge of yews. He knew it was wrong, but he could not help it. When he was seen thus employed, he fled back and sheltered himself in his stable. He was just in that state of mind and body which answers in human beings to the condition of rapid growth and dissatisfied temper, when sleeves retreat up the arms, and frocks and knickerbockers up the legs, and the family seems to be in a conspiracy for making things disagreeable to you.
So it seemed best that he should be sent to a shepherd for training. He went, and three months passed, and we looked daily for his return; when one morning, I was sent for to the door, where I saw, held in a strap, a beautiful, bashful, silky collie, small and well-proportioned, with long tail and ruff, and silk-fringed legs, ready to hide his face against the first friend with affection. I could hardly believe it was Watch—he was full-blown, come out!
That he should sleep in a stable any longer was a manifest impossibility. Watch was established as a house-dog.