"What a terribly cruel thing for your people to leave you there unprovided for!" I cried, indignantly.
"Yes, it was cruel, but I am sure some great trouble came to them else they never would have done it. Anyway, it is no uncommon thing for folks to leave their pets that way; I have known many instances. While I lived in the city an old lady in the next street went away to spend the winter, leaving her pet cat to forage for itself. The poor creature was dreadful shy, but I used to see her sit day in and day out on the cold, icy step, looking piteously up at the door and waiting for it to be opened. One very cold morning I noticed her there and thought I would carry over a piece of my meat. She always ran away when she saw me, but I thought I could lay it down and she would come back to it. Imagine my surprise when she never moved. At last I stood beside her, and then I saw she was dead; starved and frozen, her sightless eyes still looking up at the door-knob."
"How terrible!" I said.
"Yes, and some other time I will tell you of other things I knew about there, but we have had enough for one night. Hark! I hear Master's bells!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
That was a severe winter, with plenty of snow and ice after the middle of December. How I did enjoy skimming over the smooth roads, with Master in the light cutter behind me, and the merry jingle of the bells keeping time to my flying footsteps. No matter how great the hurry when we stopped, he never neglected to blanket me, and blanketing with him does not mean merely to throw a robe or blanket loosely over a horse's back, but it means to put a thick covering that buttons or buckles over the chest and far up onto the neck. He grows righteously indignant every time he gets to speaking of people who think their duty done when the back of an animal is protected, while the part containing the lungs, etc.—the most delicate, susceptible part of the horse's anatomy—is left exposed to the pitiless blast.
My doctor is one of the few sensible, consistent men in the world; heaven bless him!
My heart always aches for the thin, neglected animals, many of them without even the pretense of a blanket, that stand for hours shivering in the wind and storm. The man who will button his own warm coat around him and hurry indoors, leaving his helpless servants tied unprotected outside, must have a heart of flint.
One day the humane blacksmith came to Master and told him he thought something had ought to be done. That he had just found out that a span of horses had stood in an old shed, belonging to a saloon, for two whole days and nights, the week before, with neither food nor water. The owner was on a protracted spree. Dr. Dick was furious. He never shows anger excepting under some such circumstance as this. He immediately wrote two letters, one to the saloon-keeper and the other to the man who had neglected the team, boldly signing his name and warning them not to repeat or be party to such an offence again.