, his nose was made
to follow the little finger-tip into the milk; and, one way and
another, he consumed during that first lesson about a tablespoonful
of milk. In the afternoon he was kept for perhaps two and a half
hours from the foster-mother, and then he, with the other pups,
made great progress in the art of lapping; though they were all
glad to approach the feeding question in a more serious and
practical manner on being returned to their foster-mothers. Still,
they had learned something, and the succeeding lessons of each
following day brought quick familiarity and facility. In fact, the
trouble with Finn, after two or three days, was that, in his lusty
eagerness for nourishment, he generally risked the suicide's end by
stumbling forward and plunging his whole face in the milk. His one
notion of a safeguard against this danger was to plant one, or
both, of his tubby fore-legs in the dish, a course which always
brought him rebuke from the Mistress of the Kennels.

Toward the end of the fourth week these lessons in lapping became
real meals, and the milk so consumed was always fortified with a
thickening of some cereal rich in phosphates, besides minute doses
of precipitated phosphate of lime, intended to stiffen the gristly
leg-bones of these heavy pups, and increase bone development. The
foster-mothers had been taking this, and communicating it in their
milk, all along. This was the period in which the maternal feelings
of the foster-mothers were submitted to the most severe strain.
Finn's milk-white teeth, and his toe-nails, too, were sharp as
pins, and used with great strength and vigour. Naturally, he
entertained no unkind feelings for his loving little foster-mother;
but, from sheer ignorance and riotous good living, he gave her a
good deal of pain. Some dog-mothers would have warned him about
this pretty sharply; but not so the little sheep-dog. She never
even growled when, after feeding till he could feed no more, the
insolent grey whelp would pound and paw at her soft dugs, and tug
at them with his sharp teeth in sheer wantonness, till they were a
network of red scars and scratches. The most the gentle, plebeian
little mother would do would be to lie flat, after a while, to
protect her dugs--and that for the puppy's own sake--a movement
which always brought Finn galumphing over her shoulder to bite her
ears and paw her nose, and otherwise seek to provoke breaches of
the peace. A riotous, overbearing, dis