In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

“I was left to starve again at the London station, and here by sheer force I pulled my head through my collar and fled.

“That is my story then,” said Rover, “and it proves that the world is not all bad, and that there are many good guards on railways who are kind to travelling doggies; and once more I say, Heaven bless their brown beards where’er they may be.”

“A very nice stoly indeed,” said Ida.

“And now me,” said Maggie May.

“Well, Maggie May, I see you have got Mysie there to nurse, so I’ll put a pussy in your story, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes.”

“Then Frank will fiddle again, and after that we’ll all go to bed as gipsies ought to at this time of night.”

Chapter Fifteen.

Just Like Tiny

“The family friend for ten years or more
That basked in the garden and dozed in the hall,
And listened for songs on the mat on the door.”

    Tupper.
“Just like our Tiny!” said little Ada Mair when she first saw the subject of my present sketch. “Just like our Tiny!” repeated her wee sister Ailie, going directly up, throwing her arms about Charlie’s neck and kissing him.

Charlie, you will understand, was the dog’s name, a small black and tan, with a coat as dark as a raven’s wing, and as soft and sheeny as satin. Not, mind you, that it was soft in reality, only it felt so. The tan in Charlie’s cheeks, and eyebrows, and neck and feet, was of the richest mahogany, and his eyes were like the eyes of a young seal, or some lovely gazelle. Altogether we were all very fond of Charlie, and not a little proud of showing off his tricks to strangers, and we were positively astounded when one day we were told by a gentleman who knows a very great deal about dogs, that although our Charlie was “a very pretty fellow,” still he was not quite well enough shaped in the head, too short and broad in fact, to take a prize at a show.

“O! you must be mistaken,” said our maiden aunt, bristling up; “we think him perfection.”

I smiled, but said nothing, for I knew the critic was right.

“And just like our Tiny!” said Ailie again, as she repeated the kiss.

Charlie was seated on a chair, a favourite location of his, because he was out of reach of the old cat’s claws. Tom the cat never agreed with Charlie, and there was no love lost between the pair of them. The truth is Tom was jealous, and took every opportunity that presented itself to make poor Charlie’s life as miserable as it could well be. Tom used to invite Charlie to have a drop of milk out of his saucer sometimes.

“Real new milk!” Tom would say; “have a drop, Charlie, it will do you good.”

“Do you really mean it?” Charlie would ask, talking with those great eyes of his.

“Of course I do,” puss would reply.

About a minute after this, Charlie would be coming flying up the back stairs as if the house were on fire, with Tom behind him, whacking him all the way, and crying:

“I’ll teach you to touch my milk.”

Sometimes Charlie would have a bone, and when done with it, would hide it in a corner. Well, pussy would settle down behind it, and presently when Charlie came back:

“Come away, Charlie,” pussy would say, or seem to say. “Come away, dear; I’ve been watching your bone. Those thieving rats, you know.”

“O, thank you, Tom,” Charlie would say.

But half a minute later Charlie would be once more rushing madly up the back stairs, and pussy after him, clawing him all the way.

Pussy’s favourite seat was the footstool, and in a winter’s evening, when tea was on the table, a bright fire in the grate, the kettle singing on the hob, and Tom half asleep, but singing all the same, on the hassock, our parlour looked so cheerful. But sometimes Tom would say to Charlie:

“I’m going away to the woods to-day, Charlie, for a long, long hunt after the rats and weasels, so you can curl up on my footstool all day.”

“O, thank you!” Charlie would say.

Then away Tom would trot, and Charlie would be up on top of the hassock, and asleep in five minutes, for on the whole Charlie was a shivering little fellow when the weather was cold – just like your Tiny.

Well, pussy would not go farther away than the paddock gate; she would sit there for perhaps ten minutes, making little funny faces at the sparrows, and at cock-robin. Then back she would come.

“He’ll be asleep by this time,” Tom would say to himself, as he came stealing to the parlour.

Next moment there would be another race up the back stairs, and Charlie would be howling most dismally.

This was very naughty of pussy, and it was not at all pleasant for Charlie; no wonder he preferred sitting in the chair.

I’ll never forgot the day Charlie caught and killed his first rat. It was a very big one, and he was as proud as any deer-stalker. He must needs bring it into the parlour and lay it on the rug before us all. Tom smacked him, and took the rat away to a corner, and gloated and growled over it, and told Charlie that all the rats and mice about the place belonged to him.

Charlie could swim as fast as a Newfoundland, he could follow the carriage for miles, and whenever it stopped he used to jump up and sit on the horse’s back, and perhaps go to sleep there, for he was a sleepy little fellow at times – just like your Tiny.

Charlie used to fetch and carry. Does your Tiny do so? He would carry things much, much bigger than himself. A carriage rug, for example. And this was funny, if the rug were very heavy Charlie would stop pulling it and give it a good shaking, growling all the time as if the rug were alive. Then he would stop and look at it for a minute or two, with his head first on one side and then on the other, as much as to say:

“Will you come now, then? I’ll give you more if you don’t.”

Bright, loving, brave, and gentle was Charlie. You see I say “was Charlie,” so you will know that Charlie is not alive now; I will tell you how it happened.

It was a winter evening. Our house, The Grange, is a good mile from the station, across a wild bleak common. It would be quite three miles round by the road, so we seldom go that way. Some of our friends were coming to spend a week with us. They ought to come by the 4:30 fast train, and I was there to meet them. It was eight before they arrived, however, and O! such a dreadful night. The snow had come down and was already fully a foot deep, and lay on the road in great wreaths that no horse could pass. Then the wind blew a perfect hurricane, and the drifting snow almost took our breath away. We must go by the common or remain at the station all night. Our friends were only two, a young lady and her father, but both were very brave.

Alas! we never could have crossed the common that night, had it not been for Charlie. Many a life was lost in that terrible storm, which will long be remembered in our shire. I had not taken Charlie with me, but when in the very middle of the moor, with poor Miss B – all but dead and my friend and I sinking, and not knowing which way to turn – we had probably been going round and round in a circle – I spied something black feathering about among the snow. It was Charlie! I leave you to imagine with what joy we received him.

“Go home, Charlie!” we cried.

And away went our little guide, sometimes quite invisible, but always coming back to encourage us. Half an hour afterwards we were all at home in our bright and cheerful parlour.

But poor Charlie never recovered it. He must have been out in the snow for hours. Next day he was ill, and got rapidly worse. Strange to say that Tom the pussy was now actually kind to him.

“I fear,” I said one evening, “Charlie is worse than ever.”

Charlie was worse – one pleading look at us, one slight shiver, and our pet was no more.

There is a little grassy grave down in the orchard, that the children always cover with flowers in spring-time and summer.

That is Charlie’s.

Chapter Sixteen.