"This long-dog," said Mr Weekes, "is a wonderfully good dog—the best dog of his kind in the world."
Mr Weekes is never half-hearted about things. His enthusiasm is prodigious. He is like a human hurricane when he launches upon any of his pet subjects. At once he fell to explaining the points and final perfection of a perfect greyhound. I remember a quaint rhyme he quoted, which is perhaps worth repetition here:
"The shape of a good greyhound is:—
A head like a snake, a neck like a drake;
A back like a beam, a belly like a bream;
A foot like a cat, a tail like a rat."
The farmer, then, I say, was not the kind of man to qualify any of his remarks, and he reasserted his claim that, in the concrete, in the existent state of things, his dog was the best that breathed.
This he said for the sixth time, drank up his stout, and after helping me to lift my machine into the wagon, climbed up on to his seat, I by his side. He then flicked his horses gently with his whip and they began to amble along with the wagon. On the way to Tisbury the farmer talked with the greatest friendliness, and when we arrived at his farm he insisted on bringing me in to supper. He showed me his orchard, barns and a very fine apple-tree of which he was enormously proud, and pulled me an armful of the finest apples he could find.