I don’t know where we went, but it was a long way. I had never been off our street before in my life and I didn’t know the whole world was half as big as that. We walked on and on, and the man jerked at my rope whenever I wanted to stop and look at anything. He wouldn’t even let me pass the time of the day with dogs we met.
When we had gone about a hundred miles and were just going to turn in at a dark doorway, a policeman suddenly stopped the man. I could feel by the way the man pulled at my rope and tried to hurry on that he didn’t want to speak to the policeman. The more I saw of the man the more I saw how shy he was.
‘Hi!’ said the policeman, and we had to stop.
‘I’ve got a message for you, old pal,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s from the Board of Health. They told me to tell you you needed a change of air. See?’
‘All right!’ said the man.
‘And take it as soon as you like. Else you’ll find you’ll get it given you. See?’
I looked at the man with a good deal of respect. He was evidently someone very important, if they worried so about his health.
‘I’m going down to the country tonight,’ said the man.
The policeman seemed pleased.
‘That’s a bit of luck for the country,’ he said. ‘Don’t go changing your mind.’
And we walked on, and went in at the dark doorway, and climbed about a million stairs and went into a room that smelt of rats. The man sat down and swore a little, and I sat and looked at him.
Presently I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
‘Do we live here?’ I said. ‘Is it true we’re going to the country? Wasn’t that policeman a good sort? Don’t you like policemen? I knew lots of policemen at the public-house. Are there any other dogs here? What is there for dinner? What’s in that cupboard? When are you going to take me out for another run? May I go out and see if I can find a cat?’
‘Stop that yelping,’ he said.
‘When we go to the country, where shall we live? Are you going to be a caretaker at a house? Fred’s father is a caretaker at a big house in Kent. I’ve heard Fred talk about it. You didn’t meet Fred when you came to the public- house, did you? You would like Fred. I like Fred. Mother likes Fred. We all like Fred.’
I was going on to tell him a lot more about Fred, who had always been one of my warmest friends, when he suddenly got hold of a stick and walloped me with it.
‘You keep quiet when you’re told,’ he said.
He really was the shyest man I had ever met. It seemed to hurt him to be spoken to. However, he was the boss, and I had to humour him, so I didn’t say any more.
We went down to the country that night, just as the man had told the policeman we would. I was all worked up, for I had heard so much about the country from Fred that I had always wanted to go there. Fred used to go off on a motor-bicycle sometimes to spend the night with his father in Kent, and once he brought back a squirrel with him, which I thought was for me to eat, but mother said no. ‘The first thing a dog has to learn,’ mother used often to say, ‘is that the whole world wasn’t created for him to eat.’
It was quite dark when we got to the country, but the man seemed to know where to go. He pulled at my rope, and we began to walk along a road with no people in it at all. We walked on and on, but it was all so new to me that I forgot how tired I was. I could feel my mind broadening with every step I took.
Every now and then we would pass a very big house, which looked as if it was empty, but I knew that there was a caretaker inside, because of Fred’s father. These big houses belong to very rich people, but they don’t want to live in them till the summer, so they put in caretakers, and the caretakers have a dog to keep off burglars. I wondered if that was what I had been brought here for.
‘Are you going to be a caretaker?’ I asked the man.
‘Shut up,’ he said.
So I shut up.
After we had been walking a long rime, we came to a cottage. A man came out. My man seemed to know him, for he called him Bill. I was quite surprised to see the man was not at all shy with Bill. They seemed very friendly.
‘Is that him?’ said Bill, looking at me.
‘Bought him this afternoon,’ said the man.
‘Well,’ said Bill, ‘he’s ugly enough. He looks fierce. If you want a dog, he’s the sort of dog you want. But what do you want one for? It seems to me it’s a lot of trouble to take, when there’s no need of any trouble at all. Why not do what I’ve always wanted to do? What’s wrong with just fixing the dog, same as it’s always done, and walking in and helping yourself?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong,’ said the man. ‘To start with, you can’t get at the dog to fix him except by day, when they let him out. At night he’s shut up inside the house. And suppose you do fix him during the day what happens then? Either the bloke gets another before night, or else he sits up all night with a gun. It isn’t like as if these blokes was ordinary blokes. They’re down here to look after the house. That’s their job, and they don’t take any chances.’
It was the longest speech I had ever heard the man make, and it seemed to impress Bill. He was quite humble.
‘I didn’t think of that,’ he said. ‘We’d best start in to train this tyke at once.’
Mother often used to say, when I went on about wanting to go out into the world and see life, ‘You’ll be sorry when you do. The world isn’t all bones and liver.’ And I hadn’t been living with the man and Bill in their cottage long
