helped with the boots and the knives, he was always restrained and
courteous. He did indeed growl at Aunt Amy, but always with such a
sense of humour that everyone (except Aunt Amy) was charmed, and he
never actually supported the children in their rebellions against
the Jampot, although you could see that he liked and approved of
such things. The Jampot hated him with a passion that caused the
nursery to quiver with emotion. Was he not the cause of her
approaching departure, his first appearance having led her into a
tempest of passion that had caused her to offer a "notice" that she
had never for an instant imagined would be accepted? Was he not a
devilish dog who, with, his quiet movements and sly expressions, was
more than human? "Mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "there's
a devil in that there animal, and so they'll find before they're
many years older--'Amlet indeed--a 'eathenish name and a 'eathenish
beast."

Her enemy had discovered that in one corner of the nursery there
were signs and symbols that witnessed to something in the nature of
a mouse or a rat. That nursery corner became the centre of all his
more adventurous instincts. It happened to be just the corner where
the Jampot kept her sewing machine, and you would think, if you came
to the nursery as a stranger, and saw him sitting, his eyes fixed
beamingly upon the machine, his tail erect, and his body here and
there quivering a little, that from duties of manly devotion he was
protecting the Jampot's property. She knew better; she regarded, in
some undefined way, this continued contemplation by him of her
possessions as an ironical insult. She did everything possible to
drive him from the corner; he inevitably returned, and as he always
delicately stepped aside when she approached, it could not be said
that he was in her way. Once she struck him; he looked at her in