lly yet; and thereby hangs a
tale. T'other morning she was awakened by a vehement knocking at her
door, and S---- exclaiming, in a loud and solemn voice, "Adelaide, thy
maid and thy dog are in a fit together!" which announcement she
continued to repeat, with more and more emphasis, till my sister, quite
frightened, jumped out of bed, and came upon the stairs, where she
beheld the two women and children just come in from their walk; Anne,
looking over the banisters with her usual peculiar air of immovable
dignity, slowly ejaculating, "What a fool the girl is!" Caroline
followed in her wake, wringing her hands, and alternately shrieking and
howling, like all the Despairs in the universe. It was long before
anything could be distinguished of articulate speech, among the
fraeulein's howls and shrieks; but at length it appeared that she had
taken "die Tine" out in the Regent's Park with Anne and the children,
who now go out directly after their breakfast. Tiny, it seems, enjoyed
the trip amazingly, and became so excited and so very much transported
with what we call animal spirits in human beings that it began to run,
as the fraeulein thought, away. Whereupon the fraeulein began to run after
it; whereupon Tiny, when it heard this Dutch nymph heavy in hot pursuit,
ran till it knocked its head against a keeper's lodge, and here, because
it shook and trembled and stared, probably at its own unwonted
performance, a sympathizing crowd collected, who instantly proclaimed it
at first in a _conwulsion_ fit, and then decidedly mad. Water was
offered it, which it only stared at and shook its head, evidently
dreading the cleansing element. A policeman coming by immediately
proposed to kill it. This, however, the fraeulein objected to; and
catching the bewildered quadruped in her arms, she set off home,
escorted by a running mob of sympathetic curiosity. But about half-way
the struggle between herself and "die Tine" became so terrific that it
ended by the luckless little brute escaping from her, and precipitating
itself down an area, where it remained, invoking heaven with howls,
while Caroline ran howling down the street. The man-servant was then
sent (twice with a wrong direction) to fetch the poor little creature
up, and bring it home. At length Caroline accompanied the footman to the
scene of the dog-astrophe (you wouldn't call it _cat_-astrophe, would
you?), and "die Tine" was safely lodged in the back-yard here, where,
being left a