“Don’t despoil yourself of all you have, Rudolph,” mistress would say anxiously. “There’s Baby to be provided for.”
“I don’t want to leave him a fortune, Clossie,” he said one day. “A good education is all I wish to do for him.”
“Just a little something to start on,” she said with mother anxiety, then she went on, “I wish you wouldn’t call me Clossie any more; say Claudia.”
Master was so pleased, that he went out and bought her a beautiful ring, to commemorate the occasion of dropping her doll name.
While master was doing a little missionary work among human beings, I did a little among dogs, and had an adventure in the bargain.
Of all animals in the world, I pity most the performing animals. It is unspeakably pathetic to me to see those poor four-legged creatures on a stage, trying to do things they were never meant to do. Why should a monkey ride a bicycle, or pretend he’s a fireman, when he just hates it? I’ve seen human beings in a theatre, shrieking with laughter at the antics of poor animals on the stage, whose eyes were eloquent with fright.
Once I had as owner a lady who used to take me to the theatre. She always had a box, and concealed by the flowing laces of her gown I would watch everything that took place on the stage. Some things I liked. I think men and women enjoy strutting round, pretending they’re some one else. But the dogs who appear in vaudeville—it nearly used to break my heart to see them.
Once I saw roosters—poor, thin, half-starved looking creatures, who flapped their wings, and crowed, and stretched themselves when they came on the stage, showing that they had been confined in little cages, instead of leading a free, open-air life as roosters should.
Well, on the day, or rather the evening when I played missionary, I had tried in vain to get Gringo to take a stroll with me.
No, he would not, and lay down on a seat arranged for him in a window, so he could watch the passers-by in the Drive. Summer was coming, and it was too late for fires, so he could not lie on the hearth-rug. Master had gone off with Mr. Bonstone somewhere on the East Side. By the way, I must not forget to say that Mr. Bonstone had given up his last naughty saloon. They were all good ones now.