wood? How long are you going to stop? How’s mother? I like the country. Have you come all the way from the public-house? I’m living here now. Your father gave five shillings for me. That’s twice as much as I was worth when I saw you last.’
‘Why, it’s young Nigger!’ That was what they called me at the saloon. ‘What are you doing here? Where did you get this dog, father?’
‘A man sold him to me this morning. Poor old Bob got poisoned. This one ought to be just as good a watch-dog. He barks loud enough.’
‘He should be. His mother is the best watch-dog in London. This cheese-hound used to belong to the boss. Funny him getting down here.’
We went into the house and had supper. And after supper we sat and talked. Fred was only down for the night, he said, because the boss wanted him back next day.
‘And I’d sooner have my job, than yours, dad,’ he said. ‘Of all the lonely places! I wonder you aren’t scared of burglars.’
‘I’ve my shot-gun, and there’s the dog. I might be scared if it wasn’t for him, but he kind of gives me confidence. Old Bob was the same. Dogs are a comfort in the country.’
‘Get many tramps here?’
‘I’ve only seen one in two months, and that’s the feller who sold me the dog here.’
As they were talking about the man, I asked Fred if he knew him. They might have met at the public-house, when the man was buying me from the boss.
‘You would like him,’ I said. ‘I wish you could have met.’
They both looked at me.
‘What’s he growling at?’ asked Fred. ‘Think he heard something?’
The old man laughed.
‘He wasn’t growling. He was talking in his sleep. You’re nervous, Fred. It comes of living in the city.’
‘Well, I am. I like this place in the daytime, but it gives me the pip at night. It’s so quiet. How you can stand it here all the time, I can’t understand. Two nights of it would have me seeing things.’
His father laughed.
‘If you feel like that, Fred, you had better take the gun to bed with you. I shall be quite happy without it.’
‘I will,’ said Fred. ‘I’ll take six if you’ve got them.’
And after that they went upstairs. I had a basket in the hall, which had belonged to Bob, the dog who had got poisoned. It was a comfortable basket, but I was so excited at having met Fred again that I couldn’t sleep. Besides, there was a smell of mice somewhere, and I had to move around, trying to place it.
I was just sniffing at a place in the wall, when I heard a scratching noise. At first I thought it was the mice working in a different place, but, when I listened, I found that the sound came from the window. Somebody was doing something to it from outside.
If it had been mother, she would have lifted the roof off right there, and so should I, if it hadn’t been for what the man had taught me. I didn’t think it possible that this could be the man come back, for he had gone away and said nothing about ever seeing me again. But I didn’t bark. I stopped where I was and listened. And presently the window came open, and somebody began to climb in.
I gave a good sniff, and I knew it was the man.
I was so delighted that for a moment I nearly forgot myself and shouted with joy, but I remembered in time how shy he was, and stopped myself. But I ran to him and jumped up quite quietly, and he told me to lie down. I was disappointed that he didn’t seem more pleased to see me. I lay down.
It was very dark, but he had brought a lantern with him, and I could see him moving about the room, picking things up and putting them in a bag which he had brought with him. Every now and then he would stop and listen, and then he would start moving round again. He was very quick about it, but very quiet. It was plain that he didn’t want Fred or his father to come down and find him.
I kept thinking about this peculiarity of his while I watched him. I suppose, being chummy myself, I find it hard to understand that everybody else in the world isn’t chummy too. Of course, my experience at the public-house had taught me that men are just as different from each other as dogs. If I chewed master’s shoe, for instance, he used to kick me; but if I chewed Fred’s, Fred would tickle me under the ear. And, similarly, some men are shy and some men are mixers. I quite appreciated that, but I couldn’t help feeling that the man carried shyness to a point where it became morbid. And he didn’t give himself a chance to cure himself of it. That was the point. Imagine a man hating to meet people so much that he never visited their houses till the middle of the night, when they were in bed and asleep. It was silly. Shyness has always been something so outside my nature that I suppose I have never really been able to look at it sympathetically. I have always held the view that you can get over it if you make an effort. The trouble with the man was that he wouldn’t make an effort. He went out of his way to avoid meeting people.
I was fond of the man. He was the sort of person you never get to know very well, but we had been together for quite a while, and I wouldn’t have been a dog if I hadn’t got attached to him.
As I sat and watched him creep about the room, it suddenly came to me that here was a chance of doing him a real good turn in spite of himself. Fred was upstairs, and Fred, as I knew by experience, was the easiest man to get along with in the world. Nobody could be shy with Fred. I felt that if only I could bring him and the man together, they would get along splendidly, and it would teach the man not to be silly and avoid people. It would help to give him the confidence which he needed. I had seen him with Bill, and I knew that he could be perfectly natural and easy when he liked.
It was true that the man might object at first, but after a while he would see that I had acted simply for his good, and would be grateful.
The difficulty was, how to get Fred down without scaring the man. I knew that if I shouted he wouldn’t wait, but would be out of the window and away before Fred could get there. What I had to do was to go to Fred’s room,
