"Not for worlds!" we roar in counterfeit horror at the thought, and chuck a slab of sirloin into the gap at our elbow—it's as big as a manhole in the street. After that, whenever we catch this nice little doggie's eyes, we give him whatever happens to be on our fork, all the time hoping that he will go out on the street next day and eat a sausage full of arsenic, or some ptomaine pork.
If we don't catch his eye often enough, he pats us on the arm with a paw the size of a Virginia ham. He did that once when we were drinking a cup of coffee, and we poured it over a new pair of striped pants. We never cared to wear them afterwards—in fact, we didn't care to wear any at all for several days, until the new skin formed.
Talking of clothes reminds us that we were mistaken when we said no dog ever loved us. One did—Lord, how that dog worshipped us! He was a brindle bull belonging to an uncle of ours, who had an undershot jaw, one ear gone, a broken tail, and a record of seventy-odd murders—that is, Mutt had, not uncle.
Mutt was in many respects a very tough dog, but he loved us dearly. He dogged our footsteps, and he dogged us when we sat. In fact, when we were visiting uncle, which was fairly often—uncle always kept a few bottles on ice—that darn dog did nothing but dog us. He was the doggonest dogger we have ever known.
But we had little joy of his affection. We would rather have had him form a taste for anyone else on earth. We wouldn't have cared if he had taken up with the niggers down around the barn. In fact, when uncle wasn't looking, we used to punch him in the face and kick him behind the ears—even farther behind than that. But he regarded these caresses as proofs of affection, and would leap upon us and slobber in a riot of emotion till we were reduced to soggy helplessness.
That was the whole trouble—the slobbering. A friendly bulldog is a moist beast at best. If he loves you he drools on you, and the more he loves you the more humid he gets. But this brute was the dankest, wettest, coziest, sloppiest bulldog that ever drivelled his affection on a fancy vest. His finer feelings were a perfect swamp. His welcome was an inundation.
If, in a moment of forgetfulness or exhaustion, we so far relaxed our vigilance as to sit down, Mutt would waddle up with tears of love in his eyes and lay his head in our lap. He would gaze at us in worship as though we were a god or a side of beef, and in two minutes we would be soaking from the waist down. The trenches in Flanders had nothing on Mutt for sogginess.
Once, after we had been away for some months, we were visiting uncle, and were sitting in a nice, deep, easy chair—you know, those chairs that are so hard to get out of in an emergency. Suddenly the door burst open and seventy pounds of slobbering enthusiasm hurled itself upon us. There was no escape. Mutt took us fair in the chest and knocked our breath and all thoughts of resistance out of us in one agonized grunt.
Before they pulled him off our hair was licked into tufts, our collar was melted, the colors had run in our new tie, and we were wet to the skin. We couldn't go home that night for fear of catching double pneumonia. Mutt was a grand dog in his way, but if he took a fancy to you, you weren't safe in anything but a bathing suit or a raincoat.
Nearly all our friends have dogs—Airedales mostly. Now we have nothing against Airedales. They are good enough dogs in their way. It is true that they are as ugly as a moth-eaten buffalo in a zoo, as boisterous as Billy Sunday, and as quarrelsome as a female peace-advocate. But they are good dogs—let it go at that.