“John, do you hear burglars?”
“Oh, dear! no, mum, I don’t.”
“I’m convinced I hear them at the back of the house!” tubed Mrs McTougall.
“Indeed it ain’t, mum,” tubed John in reply. “It’s on’y that little dog as comed this morning and ain’t got used to its noo ’ome yet. It’s a-whinin’, mum; that’s wot it is.”
“Oh! do get up, John, and put a light beside him; perhaps he’s afraid of the dark.”
“Very well, mum,” said John, obedient but savage.
He arose, upset the poker and pistol with a hideous clatter, which was luckily too remote to smite horror into the heart of Mrs McTougall, and groped his way into the servants’ hall. Lighting a paraffin lamp, he went to the scullery, using very unfair and harsh language towards my innocent dog.
“Pompey, you brute!”—the footman had already learned his name—“hold your noise. There!”
He set the lamp on the head of the beer cask and returned to bed.
It is believed that poor perplexed Dumps viewed the midnight apparition with silent surprise, and wagged his tail, being friendly; then gazed at the lamp after the apparition had retired, until obliged to give the subject up, like a difficult conundrum, and finally went to sleep—perchance to dream—of dogs, or me!