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"Here we've fed and petted him from puppyhood, or at least you have, and yet he skips off with the first stranger. I never saw him behave like that to any woman, except your poor wife." "I know," I answered. "I cannot understand it. Hullo! here comes Bastin." Bastin it was, dishevelled and looking much the worse for wear, also minus his Bible in the native tongue.
But when ten o'clock came and Lad did not seek the shelter of his "cave" under the music-room piano, for the night, there was real worry. The Mistress went out on the veranda and sounded long and shrilly upon the silver whistle which hung from her belt. From puppyhood, Laddie had always come, at a sweeping gallop, on sound of this whistle.
Peter, in his dog way, fell a-wondering as he stood there, but kept his manners and remained still. When it was all over he felt a desire to show his teeth and growl, for when Father John had kissed Nada, and was shaking Jolly Roger's hand, he saw his mistress crying in that strange, silent way he had so often seen her crying in his puppyhood days.
"Oh, no, I don't mean Finn; nor any of his honest four-legged kind. I meant two-legged brutes. Finn has been handled more roughly than an understanding man would handle a tiger. And look at his face. Look into his eyes. Notice his keenly watchful air, even while I am handling him. Well, Finn, my son, you have said good-bye to puppyhood with a vengeance now.
In this block-house Major Hope took up his abode as the guardian of the settlement, and here the dog Crusoe was born; here he sprawled in the early morn of life; here he leaped, and yelped, and wagged his shaggy tail in the excessive glee of puppyhood, and from the wooden portals of this block-house he bounded forth to the chase in all the fire, and strength, and majesty of full-grown doghood.
Lady, only, of the Place's bevy of Little People, refused from earliest puppyhood to acknowledge Lad's benevolent rulership. She bossed and teased and pestered him, unmercifully. And Lad not only let her do all this, but he actually reveled in it. She was his mate. More, she was his idol. This idolizing of one mate, by the way, is far less uncommon among dogs than we mere humans realize.
Rab's most notable adventures took place after he had emerged from puppyhood. He had a most indomitable spirit of disobedience; he would hunt rabbits or anything else he could find in the woods, and one day he reached home with a snare tightly drawn round his neck, and panting distressingly for breath; the wire was cut only just in time to save his life.
It was an enormous specimen of that well-known breed, which is not generally celebrated for any peculiar intelligence, but is chiefly remarkable for size and strength. This dog had been brought up by its master from puppyhood, and as the proprietor was a single man, there had been no division of affection, as there would have been had the dog belonged to a family of several members.
If it had come nine months earlier, such an experience would have been bad indeed, for sets-back in puppyhood are hard to make up. But at fifteen months Finn had as perfect a physical foundation to go upon as any living creature could have.
Once more man and dog paused, and looked back at what had been. And the whine came in Peter's throat again and something tugged inside him, urging him to bark up into the face of the moon, as he had often barked for Nada in the days of his puppyhood, and afterward. But his master went on and Peter followed him, stepping the uneven ties one by one.
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