CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
CONTAINING A TALE TO BANISH THE CREEPIES.
"The n.o.blest mind the best contentment has."
Spenser.
"Now," said Frank, next night (we are all a.s.sembled drinking tea on the lawn), "after all those tales about your foreign favourites, and your pet creepie-creepies, I think the best thing you can do is to come nearer home and change your tactics."
"I was dreaming about c.o.c.kroaches last night," said my wife; "and you know, dear, they are my pet aversion."
"Yes," cried Ida; "do tell us a story to banish the creepies."
"Well then, here goes. I"ll tell you a story about a pet donkey and Nero"s son, "Hurricane Bob." Will that do? And we"ll call it--"
JEANNIE"S BOARDING-HOUSE: A SEASIDE STORY.
"Jeannie was an a.s.s. I do not make this remark in any disparaging way, for a more interesting member of the genus donkey never, I believe, stood upon four legs. Indeed, I do not think I would be going too far if I said that I have known many individuals not half so wise who stood upon two. Now, although I mention Jeannie in the past tense, it is because she is not present with me, but she is still, I believe, alive and well, and is at this moment, I have little doubt, quietly cropping the gra.s.s on her own green field, or gazing pensively at the ocean from the Worthing sands.
"I must tell you who was my travelling companion when I first made the acquaintance of the heroine of this little sketch. He was a very large jet-black Newfoundland dog. Such a fellow! And with such a coat too, not one curly hair in all his jacket, all as straight as quills, and as sheeny as the finest satin. Hurricane Bob can play in the sea, toying with the waves for hours, and still not be wet quite to the skin, and when he comes on sh.o.r.e again he just gives himself a shake or two, buckets of water fly in all directions, for the time being he looks like an animated mop, then away he feathers across the sands, and in a few minutes he is dry enough for the drawing-room. Bob is quite an aristocrat in his own way, and every inch a gentleman--one glance at his beautiful face and his wide, thoughtful eyes would convince you of this--nor, on being introduced to him, would you be surprised to be told that not only is he a winner of many prizes himself, but that his father is a champion dog, and his grandfather before him as well. I do not think that Hurricane Bob--or Master Robert, as we call him on high days and holidays--has a single fault, unless probably the habit he has of going tearing along the streets and roads, when out for a walk, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. It is this habit which has gained for him the sobriquet of Hurricane; it is sometimes a little awkward for the lieges, but to his credit be it said that whenever he runs down a little boy or girl he never fails to stop and apologise on the spot, licking the hands of the prostrate one, and saying, as plainly as a dog can speak, "There, there, I didn"t really mean to hurt you, and you"ll be all right again in a minute."
"We called the place where Jeannie lived, at Worthing, Jeannie"s boarding-house. It was a nice roomy stable, with a coach-house, a yard for exercise, and a loose-box. The door of the stable was always left open at Jeannie"s request, so that she could go out and in as she pleased. The loose-box was told off to Hurricane Bob; he had a dish of nice clean water, a box to hold his dog-biscuits, and plenty of dry straw, so he was as happy as a king.
"When his landlady, Jeannie, first saw him she sniffed him all over, while Bob looked up in her face.
""Just you be careful, old lady," said Bob, "for I might be tempted to catch you by the nose."
"But Jeannie was satisfied.
""You"ll do, doggie," she said; "there doesn"t seem to be an ounce of real harm in your whole composition."
"The other members of Jeannie"s boarding establishment were about twenty hens, old and young, more useful perhaps than ornamental. Now, any other landlady in the world would have had a bad time of it with this ill-bred feathered squad, for they were far from polite to her, and constantly grumbling about their food; they said they hadn"t enough of it, and that it was not good what they did get. Then they were continually squabbling or fighting with each other; the little fowls always stole all the big pieces, and the big fowls chased and pecked the little ones all round the yard in consequence, till their backs, under their feathers, must have been black and blue, and they hadn"t peace to eat the portion they had stolen. "Tick, tuck," the big fowl would say; "tick, tuck, take that, and that; tick, tuck, that"s what greed gets."
"But Jeannie was a philosopher, she simply looked at them with those quiet brown eyes of hers, shook one ear, and said--
""Grumble away, grumble away, I"m too well known to be afraid of ye; ye can"t bring disgrace on my hotel. Hee, haw! Haw, hee! There!"
"Hurricane Bob paid his bill _every_ morning and every night with a dog-biscuit. The first morning I offered Jeannie the biscuit she looked at me.
""Do you take me for a dog?" she asked. Then she sniffed it. "It do smell uncommonly nice," she said; "I"ll try it, anyhow." So she took the cake in her mouth, and marched into the yard; but returned almost immediately, still holding it between her teeth.
""What"s the correct way to eat it?" she inquired.
""That"s what I want you to find out," I said.
"Poor Jeannie! she tried to break it against the door, then against the wall, and finally against the paving stone, but it resisted all her efforts. Then, "Oh! I know," she cried. "You puts it on the ground, and holes it like a turnip." N.B.--I"m not accountable for Jeannie"s bad grammar.
"Every morning, when I came to see Master Robert, Jeannie ran to meet me, and put her great head under my arm for a cuddle. She called me Arthur, but that isn"t my name. She p.r.o.nounced the first syllable in a double ba.s.s key, and the second in a shrill treble. Ar--thur! Haw, hee! Haw, hee!
"She was funny, was Jeannie. Some mornings, as soon as she caught sight of me, she used to go off into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, then she would apologise.
""I can"t help it, Arthur," she seemed to say. "It does seem rude, I daresay, but I really can"t help it. It"s the sight of you that does it. Hee, haw! Hee, haw!"
"One day, and one day only, Bob and his landlady nearly had a quarrel.
Jeannie, having eaten her own biscuit, burst into the loose-box, to help the dog with his. "Ho, ho!" said Hurricane Robert, "you"ve come to raise the rent, have ye? Just look at this, old lady." As he spoke, the dog lifted one lip, and showed such a display of alabaster teeth, that Jeannie was glad to retire without raising the rent.
"What was Jeannie like, did you ask? Why, straight in back and strong in limb, with beautiful long ears to switch away the flies in summer, with mild, intelligent eyes of hazel brown, and always a soft, smooth patch on the top of her nose for any one to kiss who was so minded. In winter Jeannie was rough in coat. She preferred it, she said, because it kept out the cold, and made an excellent saddle for her three little playmates to ride upon. Of these she was exceedingly fond, and never more pleased and proud than when the whole three of them were on her back at one time--wee, brown-eyed, laughing Lovat S--; young Ernie, bold and bright and free; and little winsome Winnie C--.
"To be sure they often fell off, but there was where the fun and the glee lay, especially when Jeannie sometimes bent her nose to the ground and let them all tumble on the sand in a heap. And that, you know, was Jeannie"s joke, and one that she was never tired of repeating.
"In summer Jeannie shone, positively shone, all over like a race-horse or a boatman beetle, and then I can tell you it was no easy matter for her playmates to stick on her back at all. She was particularly partial, as you have seen, to the society of human beings, and brightened up wonderfully as soon as a friend appeared on the scene, but I think when alone she was rather of a contemplative turn of mind.
There was a rookery not far from Jeannie"s abode, and at this she never tired gazing.
""Well," said Jeannie to me one day, "they do be funny creatures, those rooks. I don"t think I should like to live up there, Ar--thur. And they"re always a-fighting too, just like my boarders be, and never a thing do they say from morning till night but caw, caw, caw. Now if they could only make a few remarks like this, Haw, hee! Haw, hee! Haw hee!"
""Oh! don"t, pray don"t, Jeannie," I cried, with my fingers in my ears.
"And now, then, what do you think made Jeannie such a bright, loving, and intelligent animal? Why, kindness and good treatment.
"Dear old Jeannie, I may never gaze upon her cla.s.sic countenance again, but I shall not forget her. In my mind"s eye I see her even now, as I last beheld her. The sun had just gone down, behind a calm and silent sea; scarcely do the waves speak as they break in ripples on the sand, they do but whisper. And the clouds are tipped with gold and crimson, and far away in the offing is a ship, a single ship, and these are all the signs of life there are about, save Jeannie on the beach. Alone.
"I wonder what she was thinking about."
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
AN EVENING SPENT AT OUR OWN FIRESIDE.
"Well, puss," says Man, "and what can you To benefit the public do?"
Gay.
"Draw round your chair," said I to Frank; "and now for a comfortable, quiet evening."
Frank and I had been away all the afternoon, on one of our long rambles.
Very pleasantly shone the morning sun, that had wooed us away; the ground was frozen hard as iron, there wasn"t a cloud in himmel"s blue, nor a breath of wind from one direction or another. But towards evening a change had come suddenly over the spirit of the day"s dream, which found my friend and I still a goodly two hours" stride from home. Heavy grey clouds had come trooping up from the north-east, borne along on the fierce fleet wings of a ten-knot breeze; then the snow had come on, such snow as seldom falls in "bonnie Berks;" and soon we were surrounded by one of the wildest wintry nights ever I remember. Talking was impossible; we could but clutch our sticks and boldly hurry onwards, while the wind sighed and roared through the telegraph-wires, and the snow sifted angrily through the leafless hedgerows. It was a night that none save a healthy man could have faced.
Ah! but didn"t the light from the cosy, red-curtained window, streaming over our own snow-silvered lawn, amply reward us at last; while the nice dinner quite put the climax on our happiness.
"Now for your story," said Frank. "Now for my story," I replied; "I will call it--"
THE FIRESIDE FAVOURITE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
"The lines of some cats fall in pleasant places. Mine have. I"m the fireside favourite, I"m the parlour pet. I"m the _beau ideal_, so my mistress says, of what every decent, respectable, well-trained cat ought to be--and I looked in the gla.s.s and found it so. But pray don"t think that I am vain because I happen to know the usages of polite society, and the uses and abuses of the looking-gla.s.s. No cat, in my opinion, with any claim to the dignity of lady-puss, would think of washing her face unless in front of a plate-gla.s.s mirror. But I will not soon forget the day I first knew what a looking-gla.s.s meant. I was then only a silly little mite of a kitten, of a highly inquiring turn of mind.
Well, one evening my young mistress was going to a ball, and before she went she spent about three hours in her dressing-room, doing something, and then she came down to the parlour, looking more like an angel than ever I had seen her. Oh, how she was dressed, to be sure. And she had little bunches of flowers stuck on all over her dress, and I wanted to play at "mousies" with them; but she wouldn"t wait, she just kissed me and bade me be a good kitten and not run up the curtains, and then off she went. Yes; I meant to be an awfully good little kitten--but first and foremost I meant to see the interior of that mysterious room. By good luck the door was ajar, so in I popped at once, and made direct for the table. Such a display of beautiful things I had never seen before.