"My dear," says our hostess to our host with characteristic thoughtfulness, "I think your dog is misbehaving himself--hadn't you better put him out?"
"Oh, the dog's only a little playful," says our host, eyeing us with the cold disapproval of a man who has his own opinion of a fellow who would sit in front of a big plate of roast beef and trimmings and let a poor dog suffer. "You don't want him put out, do you?" says he to us.
"Not for worlds!" we roar in counterfeit horror at the thought, and chuck a slab of sirloin into the gap at our elbow--it's as big as a manhole in the street. After that, whenever we catch this nice little doggie's eyes, we give him whatever happens to be on our fork, all the time hoping that he will go out on the street next day and eat a sausage full of arsenic, or some ptomaine pork.
If we don't catch his eye often enough, he pats us on the arm with a paw the size of a Virginia ham. He did that once when we were drinking a cup of coffee, and we poured it over a new pair of striped pants. We never cared to wear them afterwards--in fact, we didn't care to wear any at all for several days, until the new skin formed.
Talking of clothes reminds us that we were mistaken when we said no dog ever loved us. One did--Lord, how that dog worshipped us! He was a brindle bull belonging to an uncle of ours, who had an undershot jaw, one ear gone, a broken tail, and a record of seventy-odd murders--that is, Mutt had, not uncle.
Mutt was in many respects a very tough dog, but he loved us dearly. He dogged our footsteps, and he dogged us when we sat. In fact, when we were visiting uncle, which was fairly often--uncle always kept a few bottles on ice--that darn dog did nothing but dog us. He was the doggonest dogger we have ever known.
But we had little joy of his affection. We would rather have had him form a taste for anyone else on earth. We wouldn't have cared if he had taken up with the niggers down around the barn. In fact, when uncle wasn't looking, we used to punch him in the face and kick him behind the ears--even farther behind than that. But he regarded these caresses as proofs of affection, and would leap upon us and slobber in a riot of emotion till we were reduced to soggy helplessness.