p and leave him
trembling with a dead victim round his neck, a punishment for which I
still feel remorse, though it saved him from being shot as a criminal,
and cured him of his murderous tendency for many years. Pat was not a
clever dog, and when striving to learn certain simple tricks he used to
fall into abysses of miserable stupidity, and give up all hope of winning
the biscuit earned by his fellow-dog, a Scotch terrier, with all the
intelligent certainty of his nation. Pat had one attractive physical
quality; he was perfectly sweet and clean; indeed his adoring family
compared his scent to that of new mown hay; he had also a smooth head,
which was compared, by one enthusiastic admirer, to a putting-green. He
had the attractive and not very common quality of grinning--tucking up
his lips and showing the teeth, but producing the effect of a smile, and
expressing a shy and apologetic frame of mind.

Pat lived with a bad tempered Scotch terrier called Whisk, whom I liked
for his strong character and intellectual acquirements, but I had no
great affection for him. He could not bear being spoken to or even
looked at while he ate his dinner, and would growl with his mouth full,
in a terrific manner, if so disturbed. In the same ferocious spirit he
would growl and snap if his basket was accidentally kicked when he was
dozing in the evening, and however much we apologised he would take each
expression of regret as a fresh insult, and answer them all with growls,
which gradually died away in sleep.

We only once had a big dog, and he was not a success though he was an
agreeable person. We bought him and his brother, two very fat mastiff
puppies, at North Berwick, and brought them south. The one pleasant
incident in the journey was the question of a German in Edinburgh
station: "Madam, who are these dogs?" We gave away one and kept the
other, who bore the magnificent name of Tantallon, soon abbreviated into
Tan. He had many friendly habits, but they were on too large a scale for
domestic life. He had, for instance, a way of placing a dirty paw on the
table cloth at meals, and he knocked down street children by trying to
lick their faces and (so rumour said) by wagging his tail. He frightened
cab horses into hysterics, and their drivers fell off and claimed
damages. He ate with enjoyment the embroidered perambulator-cushion of a
neighbour, who was discovered looking on while Tan tore strips off the
cushion with th