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The repast was shared by the lay brethren and farm servants, and also by two or three big sheep-dogs, who had to be taught their manners towards Spring. There was none of the formality that Ambrose was accustomed to at Beaulieu in the great refectory, where no one spoke, but one of the brethren read aloud some theological book from a stone pulpit in the wall.
Alas! no model not even a statue without clothes; nothing but portrait heads, casts of animals, and such-like sobrieties absolutely nothing that could bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, or a glow to the eyes of a Johnny Dromore. With what curious silence he walked round and round the group of sheep-dogs, inquiring into them with that long crinkled nose of his!
Then they took their first night's rest away from home, in a small guest-chamber, with a good bed, though bare in all other respects. Brother Shoveller likewise had a cell to himself but the lay brethren slept promiscuously among their sheep-dogs on the floor of the refectory.
To right and left of them towered the blue, rugged peaks; straight in front the valley opened out, and they got a fairly clear view for a mile or more. About half a mile ahead, travelling in a compact mass down the valley, was a mob of some two or three hundred sheep. At their heels trotted two sheep-dogs of the small wiry breed common in the mountains.
Evening talks On the construction of sheep-folds Making hurdles Devil's guts Character in sheep-dogs Sally the spiteful dog Dyke the lost dog who returned Strange recovery of a lost dog Badger the playful dog Badger shepherds the fowls A ghost story A Sunday-evening talk Parsons and ministers Noisy religion The shepherd's love of his calling Mark Dick and the giddy sheep Conclusion
Sheep-dogs sprawled and dozed on the hearth, so that the gude wife complained of their being underfoot. But she left them undisturbed and stepped over them, for, tired as they were, they would have to go out again to drive the sheep into the fold.
If we have not yet been bombarded, we have assumed "an heroic attitude of expectation;" and if the Prussians have not yet stormed the walls, we have shown that we were ready to repel them if they had. Deprived of our shepherd and our sheep-dogs, we civic sheep have set up so loud a ba-ba, that we have terrified the wolves who wished to devour us.
It froze hard all the week, and he began a life-size group of their two sheep-dogs. Then a thaw set in with that first south-west wind, which brings each February a feeling of Spring such as is never again recaptured, and men's senses, like sleepy bees in the sun, go roving. It awakened in him more violently than ever the thirst to be living, knowing, loving the craving for something new.
Of one of these dogs his master says: "I have known him lie night and day among from ten to twenty pails full of milk, and never once break the cream of one of them with the tip of his tongue; nor would he suffer cat, rat, nor any other creature to touch it." Sheep-dogs become very much attached to each other, as this story shows.
Three days later the sheep-dogs suddenly abandoned the pose into which he had lured them with such difficulty, and made for the studio door. There in the street was Nell Dromore, mounted on a narrow little black horse with a white star, a white hoof, and devilish little goat's ears, pricked, and very close together at the tips. "Dad said I had better ride round and show you Magpie.
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