Landseer's Dogs and Their Stories

by Sarah Tytler

Mrs. Bloomfield had enough spirit to undertake a journey to Portsmouth, in order to be the first of all the friends who accompanied her to greet her son. Her husband was not able to escort her; he waited placidly with Flora, satisfied to be taken to the railway station to meet the appointed train.

I need not say that the old dog was an object of great interest, while she comported herself with her own exemplary sobriety. If she had an intuition that her master was on the road, she did not betray it on this occasion. She had no call to announce to the idle world of Rushbrook—and it was rather an idle holiday world, with a marked inclination to congregate at the railway station on another fine spring morning—that Master Harry was coming. Withal, Flora’s sagacity and devotion could hardly be expected to compass the fact that late events had intensified the importance of such information. She submitted to have a sailor’s blue ribbon tied round her neck, in honour of the day and her master; but she wore the decoration rather with imperturbability than with conscious pride, and she took no notice of the flags and evergreens which were displayed with kindly zeal.

When the train steamed into the station, and a brown face appeared at the window of a carriage, crowded with brothers and sisters, in addition to an old mother, Flora did strain violently at the chain by which Hoppus, for greater precaution, held her, and it was with difficulty that she was induced to have the grace to permit Harry to pay his respects first to his father—who, as by an involuntary motion, uncovered his white head to receive his lost son—before she sprang upon her master in a rapture of welcome, which Harry’s “Hold on, old dog; don’t worry me outright!” only raised to a higher pitch of ecstasy.

But Flora was not naturally a demonstrative, far less a forward dog. She soon controlled herself, and recalled the superior claims of others, falling respectfully, and with a shadow of shamefacedness for her late unwonted ebullition, to heel, and following decorously, for the rest of the way, in the little procession.

Only one trouble occurred with the dog. It had been arranged that the reunited family, with their friends and the parishioners present, should proceed first to the church, in order to join together in a solemn service of thanksgiving for a great act of mercy vouchsafed by Almighty God to some of His children—a ceremony which is touching in proportion to its rarity in this world of care and discontent.

Flora, who had never been to church before, and who was, as I said, walking in her place in the procession just behind Harry, who was between his father and mother, showed no sign of stopping short in the porch.

There was considerable hesitation in the breasts of the brothers and sisters, who noticed the dog’s proceedings, and in the mind of Hoppus, who considered that he had her particularly in charge. Indeed, that consequential functionary had been giving himself sundry airs on account of the guardianship, seeing that if Master Harry were the hero of the day, Master Harry’s dog, which had never ceased to look out for him, might surely be regarded as playing second fiddle to her master, reflecting glory on her keeper for the next twelve hours at least. But what would become of the glory if Flora were let get into a scrape? The official spirits of the clerk, beadle, and pew-opener were also sensibly stirred by the contretemps.

Was the harmony to be broken, and a disturbance to be created, by the forcible arrest and expulsion of the dog?—no easy task if Flora made up her mind to stick closely to her newly-found master. Would a scandal be created if a dog were suffered to make one of the congregation in a thanksgiving service?

The matter settled itself. As the principals concerned walked unconsciously within the sacred walls, and Harry took the old place he had occupied when a boy in the family pew, Flora did not wait till the objectors had formed a resolution; she advanced steadily in her line of march in the rear of her master, and lay down in her festival blue ribbon at his feet, with the coolness of unchallengeable right. It would have been impossible to dislodge her then. As it was, she soon stilled the alarm she had raised, by remaining perfectly quiet, and behaving as if she had attended church every Sunday from her puppyhood; like Scotch collies that wait discreetly on the diets of worship in pastoral Presbyterian kirks. But I am bound to confess that was the first and last occasion on which Flora went to church.