Now that we were in London half the year, Watch could not be with us constantly. For one thing his dirty paws were such a mortification to him, and we thought he would die from the amount of soot he licked off. And he could not go walks, for he would stand smiling at us in the middle of the street, with a tram, two omnibuses, a cart, and four hansoms, bearing down upon him. So he went to stay with friends, or down to the farm in the country.
That last was often necessary, but not a great success. Watch was very exclusive; he never would go walking with servants, except when everyone else was—not out, for he might have met them—but away from home. The one exception was when the servants were nurses with children. He was fond of children, and did not think it infra dig. to play with them. In the same way he despised everyone at the farm, and had to be treated in a very special manner, quite different from all other dogs. “Why can’t Watch live like any of the other dogs?” one of the children asked. “Oh, my dear, Watch is much too good for us,” his mother told him, with a deep sarcasm. No other dog could come on the rug when Watch was lying there. The cat might come and was welcome, and liked the benevolent old gentleman. Just as one would not like anybody to come and take half of one’s armchair, but might be rather flattered if a cat or a little dog jumped up to settle itself there. Cats were only cats, and fit subjects for philanthropy, but other dogs were his own ill-bred relatives. As some one summed it up, “Watch doesn’t care for dogs.”
The other dogs could not be expected to appreciate this, and Watch’s airs provoked at last one outburst from King, the steady old patriarchal collie of the farm. King flew upon him one fine day to have it out, and all the other dogs, seeing that King “had taken out a free ticket,” as the bailiff phrased it, flew to avenge their private grievances. Watch was very nearly killed, but he kept his airs to the last. Such strong arguments were brought to bear upon King, that ever after, when Watch crossed the yard, King retired promptly to his kennel. He could not trust his own self-control, and fled temptation.
Poor King! he had a sad end. He and a young golden collie called Pat went out together in some woods—poachers, I fear. Towards evening Pat came back in a fearful state of agitation, trembling. The dog must have longed for words to tell what he had seen! But they guessed it. The gamekeeper was known to have a grudge against King, and he was never heard of again from that day to this.
Watch had a very different end. He grew old and blind. He had to live altogether at the farm now, but he did not mind that. He had two great friends. One was the bailiff’s daughter, and one the niece of the landlady at the “Cricketers,” over the way. The first nursed Watch, the second he went to see every day. But the niece got married, and Watch never crossed the road again, but transferred all his affection to Katie. He was nearly blind now, quite deaf, and very rheumatic. He had not much emotion left; it soon wearied him. I remember while he was still at the house, that when we all came home at the end of the holidays in two detachments, he greeted the first-comers effusively, and then retired under the sofa, and took no notice of the second batch until they had been in the house about an hour; then, his emotions being rested, he came out and greeted them too with affection.
But two loves remained to the end; his love for Katie and his love for milk pudding—and Katie generally gave him the milk pudding. He hobbled about after her as long as he could, and sat in her room. Once they thought him dying. He lay on Katie’s bed, and Katie was away—was coming back that evening. His head lay on the pillow and his eyes were closed, and they thought him dead, when Katie came upstairs and spoke to him; and the life came back to him, and she fed him, and he lived a few days more. Then he died, this time with Katie close to him.
He is buried by the gold-fish pond under a cedar, and he has a tombstone and an epitaph, “Esne Vigil.” And the other day I passed by, and freshly-gathered daisies were lying on it. I think Katie must have put them there.
