Father was a very busy dog and had a great many things to look after. He always went to drive with our Mistress and sat very straight and fine beside William on the front seat. Then, too, [he had to help William do all sorts of things], like wash the carriages and feed the chickens and ducks and cut the grass and rake the leaves. He must have been a great comfort to William.
[He had to help William do all sorts of things]
Mother had her paws full looking after us most of that summer and so she was not able to help much with the work. Of course she kept watch and taught us to, and we soon learned who to bark at and who not. When the man from the butcher’s came Mother always made it a point to be very polite to him. She wagged her tail and sniffed his boots and followed him around to the kitchen door. He smelled very nice. Sometimes he gave us small pieces of meat and we were always glad to see him. But when a tramp or a pedlar came Mother barked and the hair stood up all along her back. We soon learned to do the same and tramps didn’t very often come much farther than the gate.
Of course [we learned] a great many other things too. Such as [to stand on our hind legs and beg] when we wanted anything and not get under the feet of the horses and keep away from the carriage wheels. Once a wheel went over the end of my tail and it hurt a good deal and I crawled into a stall and cried. Mother came and told me I was too old to cry and that it would teach me to keep out of the way.
[We learned to stand on our hind legs and beg]
Another thing we learned was not to jump up on the Baby. We did it because we loved her and wanted to lick her face, but she always tumbled over. That was because she only had two legs and was no fault of ours. Once when she tumbled she struck her head against something hard and cried dreadfully. We licked her face as hard as we could to comfort her, because that is what Mother always did to us when we were hurt, but it didn’t seem to do her much good. Then William came running up and cuffed us pretty hard and picked Baby up. I don’t think he should have punished us, but maybe he didn’t understand. After that we didn’t do it any more.
Another thing we soon learned was to let Ju-ju alone. One day, soon after we were allowed to go where we liked, Freya and I came across Ju-ju in the kitchen yard. She was fast asleep and we thought it would be great fun to jump at her and bark. So we did it and she woke up awfully quick and scratched me on the nose and chased Freya half-way to the stable. Cats can’t take a joke.