"If you imagine," I said, "for one moment that this insidious offer of a stolen bone will induce a gentleman of family to countenance an engagement between his daughter and an advertisement for Scotch whisky you are greatly mistaken. Be off with you, and never let me see your ruffianly whiskers near my basket again!"
Rather severe, no doubt, but when I am deeply moved I seldom mince matters; in fact, as a Briton, I prefer to hit out straight from the shoulder. In any case, for the time being it settled Macalister.
I say for the time being. In the autumn he had his revenge. One morning early in October I was walking down the drive accompanied by a recent arrival within our circle, a rather brainless St. Bernard (who gave his name with a lisp as "Bwuno"), when we met my child's rejected suitor. Since the incident mentioned above I had consistently cut Macalister, and I passed him now without recognition. No sooner was he by, however, and at a safe distance, than he deliberately turned and snarled over his shoulder at me the offensive epithet, "Potsdammer!"
My blood boiled; I longed to bury my teeth in the scoundrel's throat; but I remembered that Gertrude had once told me that galloping made me look ridiculous. So I affected not to hear the insult, and proceeded, outwardly calm, with my morning constitutional. But, for some reason or other, Bruno's flow of small talk appeared suddenly to dry up, and once or twice I detected him looking at me curiously out of the corners of his eyes. Next day, on my calling for him as usual he pleaded a cold. His manner struck me as odd; still I accepted his excuse. But when the cold had lasted, without any perceptible loss of appetite, for a fortnight, and I had seen him meanwhile on two occasions actually rabbiting (an absurd pastime for a St. Bernard) with Macalister, I saw what had happened and decided to ask him what he meant by it. He endeavoured to assume a conciliatory attitude, but the long and short of it was, he said, that as a Swiss, and therefore a neutral, it was impossible for him to be too careful, and he feared that my society might compromise him. I did not argue with him; it would merely have involved a loss of dignity to do so.
Since that time, though we have endured in silence, the lot of myself and my family has been a hard one. We have been fed and housed as usual, it is true, but when one has been accustomed to live on terms of the most privileged friendship with a household it is galling to find oneself suddenly treated by every member of it, from the butler downwards, as a prisoner of war. I am not even allowed now to bite the postmen; and I used to enjoy them so much, especially the evening one, who wears quite thin trousers. Our only consolation has been the hope that our misfortune might be an isolated instance. To-day, however, I learn that it is not so. I have discovered by my basket (and I have reason to think that they were conveyed thither by the malignant Macalister) three humorous (?) sketches depicting members of my race in situations which I can only describe as ridiculous, and obviously insinuating that they were to be regarded as aliens.
I appeal to you, Sir, as a lover of justice and animals, to put this matter right with the public, for the life that a British dachshund has to lead at the present moment is what is vulgarly known as a dog's life.
Yours to the bottom biscuit, Fritz.
