Sir Walter says his clothes were thin and old, and they literally dropped off him, when the dogs pushed him about.
Thomas howled with delight, and telling the man to shake off the straw in which he was buried, he sent Joe up to the house for a suit of old clothes of Mr. Bonstone’s. That tramp had the greatest admiration for the dogs, and sat about the place for days smoking and staring at them.
Mr. Bonstone at last ordered him to get out. He absolutely wouldn’t work, and busy Mr. Bonstone was not the kind of man to have an idle person about.
CHAPTER XIX
GOOD KING HARRY
So much for the Bonstones—now for my own dear family. We are not as high up among the hills as they are. My master bought, not a regular farm like the Bonstones, but what they call a gentleman’s estate. It has eighty acres of ground, some woodland, some meadow, a big old-fashioned flower garden, a fine strip of land for vegetables, and a stately old colonial mansion.
The house is situated on a bit of rising ground overlooking the Pleasant River Valley—just a tiny, baby valley with a slender thread of a river picking its way among meadows of the greenest grass I ever saw.
The house is beautifully, even luxuriously, furnished, but without a foolish expenditure of money. The drawing-room is a dream. We dogs are allowed to go in, if we are quite clean, and if we lie down quietly on the big hearth-rug, and do not romp about and shake ourselves.
Even if a dog does live in the country, there is no need for him to be careless in his habits. I often tell that to Cannie the Dandie Dinmont terrier, who fell to our lot in the division of the showman’s dogs.