“Oh, but Ned was so stupid,” said Leigh. “He hadn’t got proper reins, and he fastened the rope in a perfectly silly way. I could show him how to do it properly. In Lapland, you know, nurse, and in some other country, even dogs pull carts quite nicely.”
“They must be a different kind of dog from ours then,” said nurse. “I know dogs used to turn the spit with the meat to roast it before the fire, but they were a queer kind, and I suppose they were trained to it when they were little puppies.”
“Yes,” said Leigh, “that’s it. It’s all the training. It’s no good unless you begin to teach a dog while he’s a puppy.”
He did not say anything more just then; but that evening he said to Emma that he was going out a walk with the little ones the next day, as he would not have any lessons that afternoon.
“I suppose nurse won’t be able to go out to-morrow,” he added.
“No, not till the day after, if then,” said Emma. “But never mind, Master Leigh, I’ll go any way you like to name, and we’ll have a nice walk, if it’s a fine day.”
“I hope it will be a fine day,” said Leigh.
And the next morning, quite early, before his lessons, he took Fuzz a regular “exercising” up and down the long avenue leading to the stables at the back of the house—cart and all—the dog had really learnt to go pretty well. But then a rough little wooden sledge, on wheels, is a very different thing from a beautiful new perambulator with a sweet baby sister inside it.