It was such a charming home!--my new one;a fine great house,with pictures,and delicate decorations,and rich furniture,and no gloom anywhere,but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding sunshine;and the spacious grounds around it,and the great garden--oh,greensward,and noble trees,and flowers,no end!And I was the same as a member of the family;and they loved me,and petted me,and did not give me a new name,but called me by my old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavourneen.She got it out of a song;and the Grays knew that song,and said it was a beautiful name.
Mrs.Gray was thirty,and so sweet and so lovely,you cannot imagine it;
and Sadie was ten,and just like her mother,just a darling slender little copy of her,with auburn tails down her back,and short frocks;
and the baby was a year old,and plump and dimpled,and fond of me,and never could get enough of hauling on my tail,and hugging me,and laughing out its innocent happiness;and Mr.Gray was thirty-eight,and tall and slender and handsome,a little bald in front,alert,quick in his movements,business-like,prompt,decided,unsentimental,and with that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality!He was a renowned scientist.I do not know what the word means,but my mother would know how to use it and get effects.
She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog look sorry he came.But that is not the best one;the best one was Laboratory.My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would skin the tax-collars off the whole herd.The laboratory was not a book,or a picture,or a place to wash your hands in,as the college president's dog said--no,that is the lavatory;the laboratory is quite different,and is filled with jars,and bottles,and electrics,and wires,and strange machines;and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place,and used the machines,and discussed,and made what they called experiments and discoveries;and often I came,too,and stood around and listened,and tried to learn,for the sake of my mother,and in loving memory of her,although it was a pain to me,as realizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all;for try as I might,I was never able to make anything out of it at all.
Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,she gently using me for a foot-stool,knowing it pleased me,for it was a caress;other times I spent an hour in the nursery,and got well tousled and made happy;other times I watched by the crib there,when the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs;
other times I romped and raced through the grounds and the garden with Sadie till we were tired out,then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read her book;other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones not far away,and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one,a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair,who was a Presbyterian like me,and belonged to the Scotch minister.
The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me,and so,as you see,mine was a pleasant life.There could not be a happier dog that I was,nor a gratefuller one.I will say this for myself,for it is only the truth:I tried in all ways to do well and right,and honor my mother's memory and her teachings,and earn the happiness that had come to me,as best I could.
By and by came my little puppy,and then my cup was full,my happiness was perfect.It was the dearest little waddling thing,and so smooth and soft and velvety,and had such cunning little awkward paws,and such affectionate eyes,and such a sweet and innocent face;and it made me so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it,and fondled it,and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did.It did seem to me that life was just too lovely to--
Then came the winter.One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
That is to say,I was asleep on the bed.The baby was asleep in the crib,which was alongside the bed,on the side next the fireplace.It was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff that you can see through.The nurse was out,and we two sleepers were alone.A spark from the wood-fire was shot out,and it lit on the slope of the tent.I suppose a quiet interval followed,then a scream from the baby awoke me,and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling!
Before I could think,I sprang to the floor in my fright,and in a second was half-way to the door;but in the next half-second my mother's farewell was sounding in my ears,and I was back on the bed again.
I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the waist-band,and tugged it along,and we fell to the floor together in a cloud of smoke;I snatched a new hold,and dragged the screaming little creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall,and was still tugging away,all excited and happy and proud,when the master's voice shouted:
"Begone you cursed beast!"and I jumped to save myself;but he was furiously quick,and chased me up,striking furiously at me with his cane,I dodging this way and that,in terror,and at last a strong blow fell upon my left foreleg,which made me shriek and fall,for the moment,helpless;the came went up for another blow,but never descended,for the nurse's voice rang wildly out,"The nursery's on fire!"and the master rushed away in that direction,and my other bones were saved.
