safely eat and what they may
not. Bruce was the exception. He would pounce upon and devour a
luscious bit of laundry-soap with just as much relish as though a
similar bit of soap had not made him horribly sick the day before.
Once he munched, relishfully, a two-pound box of starch, box and all;
on his recovery, he began upon a second box, and was unhappy when it
was taken from him.
He would greet members of the family with falsetto-thunderous barks of
challenge as they came down the drive from the highway. But he would
frisk out in joyous welcome to meet and fawn upon tramps or peddlers
who sought to invade The Place. He could scarce learn his own name. He
could hardly be taught to obey the simplest command. As for shaking
hands or lying down at order (those two earliest bits of any dog's
education), they meant no more to Bruce than did the theory of
quadratic equations.
At three months he launched forth merrily as a chicken-killer;
gleefully running down and beheading The Place's biggest Orpington
rooster. But his first kill was his last. The Master saw to that.
There is no use in thrashing a dog for killing poultry. There is but
one practically sure cure for the habit. And this one cure the Master
applied.
He tied the slain rooster firmly around Bruce's furry throat, and made
the puppy wear it, as a heavy and increasingly malodorous pendant, for
three warm days and nights.
Before the end of this seventy-two-hour period, Bruce had grown to
loathe the sight and scent of chicken. Stupid as he was, he learned
this lesson with absolute thoroughness,--as will almost any
chicken-killing pup,--and it seemed to be the only teaching that his
unawakened young brain had the power to grasp.
In looks, too, Bruce was a failure. His yellowish-and-white body was
all but shapeless. His coat was thick and heavy enough, but it showed a
tendency to curl--almost to kink--instead of waving crisply, as a
collie's ought. The head was coarse and blurred in line. The body was
gaunt, in spite of its incessant feedings. As for contour or style--
It was when the Master, in disgust, pointed out these diverse failings
of the pup, that the Mistress was wont to draw on historic precedent
for other instances of slow development, and to take in vain the names
of Thackeray, Lincoln, Washington and Bismarck and the rest.
"Give him time!" she urged once. "He isn't quite six months old yet;
and he has grown so terribly fast. Why, he's o
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