I don't accuse Them. After all, psychological subtleties are not in your line.
Don't speak so fast. I need time to understand. It seems to me--
Pray, don't hurry! Your digestion might suffer in consequence.
You're right! I've some trouble in expressing myself to-day.--Well, here goes: it seems to me that of the two of us it's you they make the most of, and yet _you_ do all the grumbling.
A dog's logic, that! The more one gives the more I demand.
Not at all. I have a right to everything.
I don't imagine you lack anything, do you?
Ah, I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come....
You know very well! Inevitably, at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it--Castor Oil! Wilful and unfeeling, she holds me between her strong knees, opens my jaws-- KIKI-THE-DEMURE
But I'm afraid of hurting her--and my tongue, horrified, tastes the slimy mawkish stuff. I choke and spit, my poor face is convulsed and the end of this torture is long in coming.... You've seen me afterwards dragging myself around, melancholy, my head hanging, listening to the unwholesome glouglou the oil makes in my stomach....
Once when I was little She tried to give _me_ castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally--disappeared as if by magic.
I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.
You do? Tell me how it feels. It makes me shiver all over, just to see her putting you in the water.
Alas.... Listen then, and pity me. Sometimes, when She's come out of her tub with nothing on her but her skin, her soft hairless skin that I lick respectfully,--She spills out more warm water, throws in a brown brick which smells of tar, and calls, "Toby!" That's enough! The soul quits my body; my legs shake under me. Something shines on the water--the picture of a window all twisted out of shape--it dances about and blinds me. She seizes me, poor swooning thing that I am, and plunges me in.... Ye Gods! From that time on I'm lost.... My one hope is in her. My eyes fasten themselves on hers, while a close warmth sticks to me like another skin on top of mine.... The brick's all foamy now ... I smell tar ... my eyes and nostrils smart ... there are storms in my ears. She grows excited, breathes loud and fast, laughs, and scrubs me light-heartedly. At last She rescues me, fishing me out by the nape of my neck, I paw the air, begging for life; then comes the rough towel and the warm coverlet where, exhausted, I relish my convalescence....