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