bow!
so you want to hear some more of my story, do you? very well. it’s a very good day to sit here by the fire and tell stories, because it is raining hard and there isn’t much a dog can do in the city on a rainy day. for my part i think cities are rather stupid places, anyway. of course, on bright days, there’s the park and the avenue, and i like those very much. but it’s a bother always having to be on a leash. when i see a dog on the other side of the street whom i am quite sure i should like to know, all i can do is just say “hello!” in the country i could trot over to him and make friends and, like as not, we’d go off on a nice long hunt in the woods. there’s lots to see in the city, but it is awfully noisy and crowded and at first it made me quite nervous. i’m getting used to it now. i do think it’s a mistake to have so little yard about the house, though, especially when it is paved with stone and brick. even the stable floor is stone and i’m sure there are some fine fat rats under it if i could only get at them. why, i haven’t had but one good dig since i got here! and that was that day in the park when the big policeman came running over, waving a funny short stick at us, and said he would have us both taken to jail if i didn’t stop digging.
yes, i do miss the digging. the other day i made believe i smelled a fox in the corner of the back hall and was scratching away at the boards and having a real good time when cook came and drove me away. i forgave her, though, for she gave me a chicken leg to eat. i do have good things to eat here; better than i used to in the country; more different kinds of things, anyway. and a dog likes variety as well as you two-legged folks do. i don’t want you to think i am at all unhappy here, for i am not. if only there was a garden bed to dig in now and then i wouldn’t ask for more. and, anyhow, what a dog wants most is love and kindness, and i get lots of that. i guess i don’t care about the flower bed. excuse me just a moment while i lick your face.
well, i left off where the family had gone to the city, didn’t i? we dogs had a good deal of fun in that snow. it was the first snow i had ever seen and i had a fine time running around in it and biting it. freya said it made her paws cold and she sat in the stable door and just looked at it and shivered until i chased her out and rolled her over in it. after that she didn’t mind it a bit. william made snowballs and threw them for us to chase. it was great fun for they went into the snow, quite out of sight, and we had to burrow down and dig them out. and then when we tried to take them in our teeth to bring them back to william they would fall to pieces!
after that there was no more snow for quite a long time and we hunted a good deal. jack used to come over and he and father, and sometimes the rest of us, would go trotting off into the woods and stay for hours. sometimes jack would see a pheasant or a grouse and get awfully excited and run and run after it and get so tired that when he came back he would have to throw himself down and rest. usually, though, we never saw much except chipmunks and squirrels; but one day jack found a rabbit in a clump of bushes and we all had a merry time chasing him. of course the rest of us, with our short legs, couldn’t keep up with jack and he and the rabbit were soon way ahead of us. and when we came up to him he was sitting by a hole in the ground where the rabbit had gone.
freya and i began to dig at a great rate and just made the dirt fly. mother wanted to stop us, but father said “no, let them have their fun.” freya kept getting in my way, so i had to nip her on the leg and chase her away. pretty soon all you could see of me was just the tip of my tail sticking out of the hole. and just then i heard a lot of barking and when i had backed out all the others were tearing across the field after that rabbit! he had crept out of a hole on the other side of the little hill where he lived and run off again. i felt rather silly. the others came back pretty soon without the rabbit. mother said that rabbits lived in houses with a great many doors, and when you went in one door they came out another. i don’t think that’s a fair way to play, do you? afterwards, though, i was glad we hadn’t caught the rabbit, for he was such a tiny, pretty little thing that it would have been a shame to hurt him.
the weather got colder and colder and there was more snow. we didn’t mind the cold, though, for our coats had been growing thicker and warmer since summer, and our house was nice and cosy. one day mother took freya and me down to the pond and when we got there it looked very queer. i asked what had happened to the water and she said it had frozen into ice, and while i was looking at it she gave me a push and i had to run down the bank and when i got to the bottom and came to the pond my feet went up in the air and i went over on my back and i slid way out on the ice. mother and freya stood there and laughed at me, and when i tried to get on my feet they just slipped from under me and i was scared and whined. but mother told me not to be a baby and pretty soon i got back to the shore and then i pushed freya down the bank and she slid, too, and made a worse fuss about it than i had. then mother showed us how we could walk quite nicely by taking very short steps and soon we were all three chasing each other about and falling down and rolling over and having a grand time.
one morning we awoke to find the snow above the bottom of the kennel windows, and there was william out there with a red muffler around his neck digging a path to us with a wooden shovel. the snow that time was so deep that we could only go where william had made paths. but father showed us how to have a lot of fun by digging tunnels and freya and i dug one all the way from the kennel to the stable door. the funny thing was that in the tunnels, under all that cold snow, it was warmer than it was outside!
when william went to the village for the mail and other things now he went in a sleigh, and one afternoon he took all us dogs with him and we had the finest sort of a time. we barked at everything we saw, and once freya fell out of the sleigh into a snowbank and went out of sight! (i pushed her off the seat, but william didn’t know it.) in the village a lady who kept the little store where william bought his newspaper came out and petted us and fed us peanuts. peanuts are very nice. the part you eat is inside a shell and you have to crack the shell open first. sometimes you eat some of the shell too, without meaning to, but it doesn’t hurt you. the lady thought it was very funny to see us eat the peanuts and she laughed a lot and said we were clever dogs.
“sure, ma’am, they’ll eat anything at all,” said william, and the lady laughed some more and said:
“i know one thing they won’t eat.”
“what’s that?” asked william.
so she went back into the little store and came out with something that looked like a lemon but wasn’t. “let me see them eat that,” she said to william.
“a pickled lime, is it?” said william. “they’re that fond of ’em, ma’am, i can’t keep enough of ’em on hand, but they’re bad for dogs, ma’am.”
the lady laughed again. “that’s a fib,” she said. “you know they wouldn’t touch it.”
“won’t they then,” said william. “just watch ’em, ma’am.” so he took the pickled lime and looked at us, trying to make up his mind which of us to give it to. i hoped he wouldn’t give it to me, but he did. “eat it, fritzie,” he said coaxingly. “good dog.”
well, william was a friend of mine and i wanted to help him out of his fix, and so i took it and laid it down on the seat and ate it. it was quite the worst tasting thing i ever had. it was sort of sour and sort of salt and full of puckery juice. but i ate it, and when it was all gone i tried to make the lady think that i wanted more, and william was so pleased with me that afterwards he stopped at the butcher’s and brought out a piece of meat for each of us. i’m sure that meat saved me from being a very sick dog. even as it was i felt quite unhappy for awhile and didn’t bark once all the way home.
a few days after that the family came back and maybe i wasn’t glad to see them again. william brought them from the station in the big sleigh, and as soon as they were in the house william called to us dogs and we all went running in to see them. and the master said how well we all looked and how freya and i had grown, and the baby sat down on the floor and we all jumped about her and licked her face and i ran off with one of her fur mittens and took it under the couch and chewed it a little. it was a very happy time. william told the master how i had eaten the pickled lime for him in the village and the master and mistress laughed and laughed about it and said i was a fine dog, and after that for a long time the master called me “the limehound”!
it was wonderful the way the baby had grown in such a short time. i had to jump now when i wanted to lick her face! she was awfully glad to see us and cried a little when william took us back to the kennel.
