y and her
company are going too.

This Mayflower of mine is a strange animal. Instinct and imitation make
in her an approach to reason which is sometimes almost startling. She
mimics all that she sees us do, with the dexterity of a monkey, and far
more of gravity and apparent purpose; cracks nuts and eats them; gathers
currants and severs them from the stalk with the most delicate nicety;
filches and munches apples and pears; is as dangerous in an orchard as
a schoolboy; smells to flowers; smiles at meeting; answers in a pretty
lively voice when spoken to (sad pity that the language should be
unknown!) and has greatly the advantage of us in a conversation,
inasmuch as our meaning is certainly clear to her;--all this and a
thousand amusing prettinesses (to say nothing of her canine feat of
bringing her game straight to her master's feet, and refusing to resign
it to any hand but his), does my beautiful greyhound perform untaught,
by the mere effect of imitation and sagacity. Well, May, at the end
of the coursing season, having lost Brush, our old spaniel, her great
friend, and the blue greyhound, Mariette, her comrade and rival, both of
which four-footed worthies were sent out to keep for the summer, began
to find solitude a weary condition, and to look abroad for company. Now
it so happened that the same suspension of sport which had reduced our
little establishment from three dogs to one, had also dispersed the
splendid kennel of a celebrated courser in our neighbourhood, three
of whose finest young dogs came home to 'their walk' (as the sporting
phrase goes) at the collarmaker's in our village. May, accordingly, on
the first morning of her solitude (she had never taken the slightest
notice of her neighbours before, although they had sojourned in our
street upwards of a fortnight), bethought herself of the timely resource
offered to her by the vicinity of these canine beaux, and went up boldly
and knocked at their stable door, which was already very commodiously
on the half-latch. The three dogs came out with much alertness and
gallantry, and May, declining apparently to enter their territories,
brought them off to her own. This manoeuvre has been repeated every day,
with one variation; of the three dogs, the first a brindle, the second
a yellow, and the third a black, the two first only are now allowed to
walk or consort with her, and the last, poor fellow, for no fault that
I can discover except May's caprice, is dri