in having their tires snapped at, as they whirl swiftly by; and, one
day, after Puppy had flung himself in a fine fury at the tires of one of
these soulless things, he gave a sharp yelp--"not cowardly!"--and lay a
moment on the roadside. But only a moment; then he went limping off on
his three sound legs, and hid himself away from all sympathy, in some
unknown spot. It was in vain we called and sought him, and only after
two days was he discovered, in the remotest corner of a great rocky
cellar, determined apparently to die alone in an almost inaccessible
privacy of wood and coal. Yet, when at last we persuaded him that life
was still sweet and carried him upstairs into the great living-room, and
the beautiful grandmother, who knows the sorrows of animals almost as
the old Roman seer knew the languages of beasts and birds, had taken
him in charge and made a cosy nest of comforters for him by the fire,
and tempted his languid appetite--to which the very thought of bones
was, of course, an offence--with warm, savory-smelling soup; then, he
who had certainly been no coward--for his thigh was a cruel lump of pain
which no human being would have kept so patiently to himself--became
suddenly, like many human invalids, a perfect glutton of self-pity; and
when we smoothed and patted him and told him how sorry we were, it was
laughable, and almost uncanny, how he suddenly set up a sort of moaning
talk to us, as much as to say that he certainly had had a pretty bad
time, was really something of a hero, and deserved all the sympathy we
would give him. So far as one can be sure about anything so mysterious
as animals, I am sure that from then on he luxuriated in his little
hospital by the fireside, and played upon the feelings of his beautiful
nurse, and of his various solicitous visitors, with all the histrionic
skill of the spoiled and petted convalescent. Suddenly, however, one
day, he forgot his part. He heard some inspiring barking going on
nearby--and, in a flash, his comforters were thrust aside, and he was
off and away to join the fun. Then, of course, we knew that he was well