I'll be on the safe side," said Henry calmly.

And so it was settled. That very night Fussie supped off, not rats, but
terrapin and other delicacies in Henry's private sitting-room.

It was the 1888 tour, the great blizzard year, that Fussie was left
behind by mistake at Southampton. He jumped out at the station just
before Southampton, where they stop to collect tickets. After this long
separation, Henry naturally thought that the dog would go nearly mad
with joy when he saw him again. He described to me the meeting in a
letter.

"My dear Fussie gave me a terrible shock on Sunday night. When we
got in, J----, Hatton, and I dined at the Cafe Royal. I told Walter
to bring Fussie there. He did, and Fussie burst into the room while
the waiter was cutting some mutton, when, what d'ye think--one
bound at me--another instantaneous bound at the mutton, and from
the mutton nothing would get him until he'd got his plateful.

"Oh, what a surprise it was indeed! He never now will leave my
side, my legs, or my presence, but I cannot but think, alas, of
that seductive piece of mutton!"

Poor Fussie! He met his death through the same weakness. It was at
Manchester, I think. A carpenter had thrown down his coat with a ham
sandwich in the pocket, over an open trap on the stage. Fussie, nosing
and nudging after the sandwich, fell through and was killed instantly.
When they brought up the dog after the performance, every man took his
hat off.... Henry was not told until the end of the play.

He took it so very quietly that I was frightened, and said to his son
Laurence who was on that tour:

"Do let's go to his hotel and see how he is."

We drove there and found him sitting eating his supper with the poor
dead Fussie, who would never eat supper any more, curled up in his rug
on the sofa. Henry was talking to the dog exactly as if it were alive.
The next day he took Fussie back in the train with him to London,
covered with a coat. He is buried in the dogs' cemetery, Hyde Park.

His death made an enormous difference to Henry. Fussie was his constant
companion. When he died, Henry was really alone. He never spoke of what
he felt about it, but it was easy to know.

We used to get hints how to get this and that from watching Fussie! His
look, his way of walking! He _sang_, whispered eloquently and low--then
barked suddenly and whispered again! Such a lesson in the law of
contrasts!

Th