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dogs with a leathern strap.

      “It is the fourth turning to the right, then the second to the left, and second to the right again; so you are not going that way.”

      I made this remark to the dogs, who had stopped at a turning, and wanted to drag me in what I considered the wrong direction.

      “The fourth turning, Aileen,” I repeated, forcing them to come with me.

      The night seemed to get darker, and the rain heavier every moment, and that fourth turning seemed to have been spirited away. I found it at last, or thought I had done so, then the second to the left, and finally the second to the right.

      By this time the lights of the station should have appeared.

      They did not. We were lost, and evidently long miles from home. Lost, and it was near midnight. We were cold and wet and weary; at least I was, and I naturally concluded the poor dogs were so likewise.

      We tried back, but I very wisely left it to the two Newfoundlands now to find the way if they could.

      “Go home,” I cried, getting behind them; and off they went willingly, and at a very rapid pace too.

      Over and over again, I felt sure that the poor animals were bewildered, and were going farther and farther astray.

      Well, at all events, I was bewildered, and felt still more so when I found myself on the brow of a hill, looking down towards station lights on the right instead of on the left, they ought to have been. They were our station lights, nevertheless, and a quarter of an hour afterwards we were all having supper together, the Newfoundlands having been previously carefully dried with towels. Did ever dogs deserve supper more? I hardly think so.

      Chapter Six.

      Aileen and Nero – A Dog’s Receipt for Keeping Well – Dog’s in the Snow in Greenland – The Life-Story of Aileen’s Pet, “Fairy Mary.”

      “Give me a look, give me a face,

      That makes simplicity a grace.”

      Simplicity was one of the most prominent traits of Aileen’s character. In some matters she really was so simple and innocent, that she could hardly take her own part. Indeed, in the matter of food, her own part was often taken from her, for any of the cats, or the smaller dogs, thought nothing of helping the noble creature to drink her drop of milk of a morning.

      Aileen, when they came to her assistance in this way, would raise her own head from the dish, and look down at them for a time in her kindly way.

      “You appear to be very hungry,” she would seem to say, “perhaps more so than I am, and so I’ll leave you to drink it all.”

      Then Aileen would walk gently away, and throw herself down beneath the table with a sigh.

      There was a time when illness prevented me from leaving my room for many days, but as I had some serials going on in magazines, I could not afford to leave off working; I used, therefore, to write in my bedroom. As soon as she got up of a morning, often and often before she had her breakfast, Aileen would come slowly upstairs. I knew her quiet but heavy footsteps. Presently she would open the door about half-way, and look in. If I said nothing she would make a low and apologetic bow, and when I smiled she advanced.

      “I’m not sure if my feet be over clean,” she would seem to say as she put her head on my lap with the usual deep-drawn sigh, “but I really could not help coming upstairs to see how you were this morning.”

      Presently I would hear more padded footsteps on the stairs. This was the saucy champion Theodore Nero himself, there could be no mistake about that. He came upstairs two or three steps at a time, and flung the half-open door wide against the wall, then bounded into the room like a June thunderstorm. He would give one quick glance at Aileen.

      “Hallo!” he would say, talking with eyes and tail, “you’re here, are you, old girl? Keeping the master company, eh? Well, I’m not very jealous. How goes it this morning, master?”

      Nero always brought into the sick-room about a hundredweight at least of jollity, sprightliness, life, and love. It used to make me better to see him, and make me long to be up and about, and out in the dear old pine woods again.

      “You always seem to be well and happy, Nero,” I said to him one day; “how do you manage it?”

      “Wait,” said Nero, “till I’ve finished this chop bone, and I’ll tell you what you should do in order to be always the same as I am now.”

      As there is some good in master Nero’s receipt, I give it here in fall.

A Dog’s Receipt for Keeping Well

      “Get up in the morning as soon as the birds begin to sing, and if you’re not on chain, take a good run round the garden. Always sleep in the open air. Don’t eat more breakfast than is good for you, and take the same amount of dinner. Don’t eat at all if you’re not hungry. Eat plenty of grass, or green vegetables, if you like that better. Take plenty of exercise. Running is best; but if you don’t run, walk, and walk, and walk till you’re tired; you will sleep all the better for it. One hour’s sleep after exercise is deeper, and sweeter, and sounder, and more refreshing than five hours induced by port-wine negus. Don’t neglect the bath; I never do. Whenever I see a hole with water in it, I just jump in and swim around, then come out and dance myself dry. Do good whenever you can; I always do. Be brave, yet peaceful. Be generous, charitable, and honest. Never refuse a bit to a beggar, and never steal a bone from a butcher; so shall you live healthfully and happy, and die of the only disease anybody has any right to die of – sheer old age.”

      I never saw a dog appreciate a joke better than did poor Nero. He had that habit of showing his teeth in a broad smile, which is common to the Newfoundland and collie.

      Here is a little joke that Nero once unintentionally perpetrated. He had a habit of throwing up the gravel with his two immense hinder paws, quite regardless of consequences. A poor little innocent mite of a terrier happened one day to be behind master Nero, when he commenced to scrape. The shower of stones and gravel came like the discharge from a mitrailleuse on the little dog, and fairly threw him on his back. Nero happened to look about at the same time, and noticed what he had done.

      “Oh!” he seemed to say as he broke into a broad grin, “this is really too ridiculous, too utterly absurd.”

      Then bounding across a ditch and through a hedge, he got into a green field, where he at once commenced his usual plan of working off steam, when anything extra-amusing tickled him, namely, that of running round and round and round in a wide circle. Many dogs race like this, no doubt for this reason: they can by so doing enjoy all the advantages of a good ran, without going any appreciable distance away from where master is. Apropos of dogs gambolling and racing for the evident purpose of getting rid of an extra amount of animal electricity, I give an extract here from a recent book of mine2. The sketch is painted from real life.

Dogs in the Snow in Greenland

      “The exuberance of great ‘Oscar’s’ joy when out with his master for a walk was very comical to witness. Out for a walk did I say? Nay, that word but poorly expresses the nature of Oscar’s pedal progression. It was not a walk, but a glorious compound of dance, scamper, race, gallop, and gambol. Had you been ever so old it would have made you feel young again to behold him. He knew while Allan was dressing that he meant to go out, and began at once to exhibit signs of impatience. He would yawn and stretch himself, and wriggle and shake; then he would open his mouth, and try to round a sentence in real verbal English, and tailing in this, fall back upon dog language, pure and simple, or he would stand looking at Allan with his beautiful head turned on one side, and his mouth a little open, just sufficiently so to show the tip of his bright pink tongue, and his brown eyes would speak to his master. ‘Couldn’t you,’ the dog would seem to ask – ‘couldn’t you get on your coat a little – oh, ever so little – faster? What can you want with a muffler? I don’t wear a muffler. And now you are looking for your fur cap, and there it is right before your very eyes!’

      “‘And,’ the dog would add, ‘I daresay we are off at

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