PEKING LION DOG (LONG-HAIRED).
Property of Mr. George Brown, H.B.M. Consul.
At last a day came when we despaired of his life. A Chinaman said, "Let me take him, and nurse him. I think I can cure him. You see, he is a Chinese dog, and you do not understand how to treat him. I can be with him all the while." So from our great love for him we let him go in his little quilted basket, with his quilted coverlet of gay patchwork, and little red pillow made expressly for himself, because he was so fond of making a pillow of an arm or a hand.
But in an hour or two he was brought back. He had thrown in his lot with Europeans, and the little Chinese dog would not eat from the hands of strange Chinamen, nor do anything they wished. His eyes were already glazed, and he seemed already half dead when he was brought back. So because all seemed over, and as if it did not matter what we did now, we held him quite close to the stove and poured port-wine down his throat. The little glazed eyes became limpid once more, and he looked up, content to be with us. Then I sat with him on my lap, thinking still of him as dead, and only waiting for the end. But the little dog rallied so, that that night, when taken upstairs, he struggled out of his basket on to the bed, where he had always loved best to sleep. He liked to lie there, with his little black-and-tan head looking so droll on the white pillow. Put down on the floor, for fear he should fall off—for, alas! his little legs gave way under him, and he tottered once as he tried to cross the bed—he actually ran about the room, till he found the water-jug, stood up on his hind legs, and deliberately dipped his pretty head into it and drank.
Perhaps that draught injured him, for the Chinese declared cold water must be fatal to him. Anyway, after that his rallying power appeared to have abandoned him. But even then he still used to look up and listen with great intensity when he heard his master's step upon the stair, recognising that to the very last. But though he lingered on all the next day and night, and on into the next morning, he was always growing weaker, till at last he could not swallow the spoonfuls we gave him every two hours. Once or twice he had fits of barking; but as he lay quite still and barked, we hoped he was quite happy, thinking he was fighting and vanquishing some other dog rather than suffering pain. Yet after such long drawn out dying it was a relief in the end when on the twelfth day up-country we saw the little thing lie quite still and stiff; though, as we looked at the graceful little head curled round with its two silky ears, our eyes filled with tears, and we felt almost as if we had lost a child.
ON A MOUNTAIN ROAD.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.