nted that in the course of the day her eye would be bound to rest on
it so frequently that she would probably have retained the impression
by the next day. And something of this kind must have happened; for on
the following morning after having gone through the explanation once
more, and put the sheet aside, I wrote the figures at random all over
another sheet of paper when she actually "spotted" them all--with the
exception of "7," and a comparison of the two sheets soon enabled her
to put this right, too. There could be no doubt but that she had really
mastered her lesson, for the replies were rapped out with absolute
certainty. I next attempted two-figured numerals; nor was this very
difficult, for in 32, for instance, the 3 was rapped by the left--the
"decimal" paw--and therefore meant "30," while the "2" was added by two
raps from the right paw; in fact, she memorized this without any
trouble--and for a few days we practised "reading numbers" assiduously,
so as to get her perfect.

Here is an example:

20 + 14? Answer: 34. 24 + 32? Answer: 56.
11 + 15 + 2? Answer: 28

Here again the most surprising thing was the celerity with which the
replies were given. I was at first inclined to _make_ her look at the
paper attentively, but she would merely glance over it, then came a
moment of quick thought--and the answer was ready. (I propose to return
to this point again in the chapter on "Seeing.")

In the course of such exercises it is no exaggeration to say that one
does actually _see_, by an alteration in the eye, that the dog is
thinking; the gaze is withdrawn, so to speak, as it is in the eye of a
person engaged in the process of thinking; and then brightens when the
result has been attained. I have often been so absorbed in contemplating
this process in Lola that I have almost forgotten to continue the work
we were engaged on.

As the lessons progressed it became easy to teach her to read the
letters, for she now knew what it was all about, and she soon picked up
the figures requisite for any given letter. Personally, I always use
the Latin script for writing, and it was therefore more convenient to
teach her this form rather than the Gothic, but for the sake of
simplicity I made use of the small characters only. I wrote these out
on a sheet of paper, taking care to make them very large, and with the
equivalent figure under each--thus:

a e i o u a