I confess to an abiding affection
for that energetic, slight, fragile, intensely living and transient
figure. He liked me, even before we met, on the strength of a page or
two of my writing, and after we had met I am glad to think he liked me
still. He used to point out to me with great earnestness, and even with
some severity, that "a boy _ought_ to have a dog." I suspect that he was
shocked at my neglect of parental duties.
Ultimately it was he who provided the dog. Shortly afterward, one day,
after playing with the child on the rug for an hour or so with the most
intense absorption, he raised his head and declared firmly, "I shall
teach your boy to ride." That was not to be. He was not given the time.
But here is the dog--an old dog now. Broad and low on his bandy paws,
with a black head on a white body and a ridiculous black spot at
the other end of him, he provokes, when he walks abroad, smiles
not altogether unkind. Grotesque and engaging in the whole of his
appearance, his usual attitudes are meek, but his temperament discloses
itself unexpectedly pugnacious in the presence of his kind. As he lies
in the firelight, his head well up, and a fixed, far away gaze directed
at the shadows of the room, he achieves a striking nobility of pose in
the calm consciousness of an unstained life.
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