must not place a stick, a slipper, a glove, or
anything with which he could play, upon one's head--since such an action
reduced him at once to frenzy. For so conservative a dog, his
environment was sadly anarchistic. He never complained in words of our
shifting habits, but curled his head round over his left paw and pressed
his chin very hard against the ground whenever he smelled packing. What
necessity, he seemed continually to be saying, what real necessity is
there for change of any kind whatever? Here we were all together, and
one day was like another, so that I knew where I was--and now you only
know what will happen next; and I--I can't tell you whether I shall be
with you when it happens! What strange, grieving minutes a dog passes at
such times in the underground of his subconsciousness, refusing
realisation, yet all the time only too well divining. Some careless
word, some unmuted compassion in voice, the stealthy wrapping of a pair
of boots, the unaccustomed shutting of a door that ought to be open, the
removal from a down-stair room of an object always there--one tiny thing,
and he knows for certain that he is not going too. He fights against the
knowledge just as we do against what we cannot bear; he gives up hope,
but not effort, protesting in the only way he knows of, and now and then
heaving a great sigh. Those sighs of a dog! They go to the heart so much
more deeply than the sighs of our own kind, because they are utterly
unintended, regardless of effect, emerging from one who, heaving them,
knows not that they have escaped him!

The words: "Yes--going too!" spoken in a certain tone, would call up in
his eyes a still-questioning half-happiness, and from his tail a quiet
flutter, but did not quite serve to put to rest either his doubt or his
feeling that it was all unnecessary--until the cab arrived. Then he
would pour himself out of door or window, and be found in the bottom of
the vehicle, looking severely away from an admiring cabman. Once settled
on our feet he travelled with philosophy, but no digestion.

I think no dog was ever more indifferent to an outside world of human
creatures; yet few dogs have made more conquests--especially among
strange women, through whom, however, he had a habit of looking--very
discouraging. He had, natheless, one or two particular friends, such as
him to whom this book is dedicated, and a few persons whom he knew he had
seen before, but, broadly speaking, t