sole accomplishment, that of giving his paw,
and Sister Jane, in a fine spirit of sacrifice, made a point of shaking
hands with him long and politely at least a dozen times a day, rushing
to a faucet as soon as this hospitable rite was accomplished for a
fierce scouring of her own polluted palms. Housewife Honeyvoice tempted
his appetite with the most savory of puppy menus and kept up such a
flow of tuneful comment while he ate that, even in his days of deepest
gloom, he rarely failed to polish his dish and then thump it all about
in an unscientific effort to extract gravy from tinware. Esther's arms
were now as strong as her feet were lively and, after the first week or
so, he would let her pick him up like a baby and carry him about and
would even be surprised, at times, into a game of romps. He needed play
as much as he needed food, but he was curiously awkward at it, not
merely with the usual charming clumsiness of puppies but with a
blundering uncertainty in all his movements, miscalculating his jumps,
lighting in a sprawling heap and often hurting himself by a lop-sided
tumble.

Yet apart from these brief lapses he maintained his pose of hopeless
melancholy, varied by frantic perturbations, until his new name fitted
him like his new collar.

"How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

He was not, to be sure,

"The glass of fashion and the mold of form,"

for his nose, from the bench point of view, was nearly half an inch too
long. But his "dejected haviour" and deep-rooted suspicion of his
surroundings were Hamlet's own. He felt himself "be-netted round with
villanies" and apprehensively watched the simple ways of our family in
profound despondency and distrust. The fears that haunted him kept him
so hushed that we grew to believe he was actually dumb,--a defect in
physical endowment that might account for many abnormalities. Now and
then the rigid little figure beside me on the veranda--for gradually,
day by day, he edged an inch or two nearer--would give a stir of
weariness or even drop, exhausted, for a nap, but in the main

"as patient as the female dove
When that her golden couplets are disclos'd,
His silence" would "sit drooping."

Through all the hot summer days I had to see him,

"A dull and muddy mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams,"

but as soon as we reached the cool cover of dusk, I would lift the now