"Can't we hush it up?" said my uncle.

"Hush it up?" retorted my aunt. "If you'd heard the row, you wouldn't
sit there and talk like a fool. And if you'll take my advice," added
my aunt, "you'll set to work on this 'training,' or whatever it is,
that has got to be done to the dog, before any human life is lost."

My uncle was too busy to devote any time to the dog for the next day
or so, and all that could be done was to keep the animal carefully
confined to the house.

And a nice time we had with him! It was not that the animal was
bad-hearted. He meant well--he tried to do his duty. What was wrong
with him was that he was too hard-working. He wanted to do too much.
He started with an exaggerated and totally erroneous notion of his
duties and responsibilities. His idea was that he had been brought
into the house for the purpose of preventing any living human soul
from coming near it and of preventing any person who might by chance
have managed to slip in from ever again leaving it.

We endeavored to induce him to take a less exalted view of his
position, but in vain. That was the conception he had formed in his
own mind concerning his earthly task, and that conception he insisted
on living up to with, what appeared to us to be, unnecessary
conscientiousness.

He so effectually frightened away all the trades people, that they at
last refused to enter the gate. All that they would do was to bring
their goods and drop them over the fence into the front garden, from