“What I does is this—what I does is, I gets ’em quite close to me, and then I talks to ’em.” This is what Mrs. Pinnix invariably replied, when asked how it was that her children were of such good behaviour and gave so little trouble. And Mrs. Pinnix knew, for she had been the careful mother of thirteen, and had developed this happy, good-natured method of dealing with each in turn, boys and girls alike. No doubt she was a remarkable woman in many ways, for she won the last event on the card at the time of the Jubilee sports, being then the mother of ten—“Skipping: open to mothers only.” But the point here, in this remark of hers, is that a long experience with dogs shows Nor will this be found to be the fanciful idea of the few, if inquiry be made. To live largely, for instance, among those whose labours lie far from cities, and who, of long habit, have come to note many things concerning which the less fortunate townsman knows nothing, is to learn many things oneself. To hazard the remark in such quarters, that a good many people have no belief in the theory that talking to a dog does him good, is to receive for answer, “Ah, but I knows as it does.” Others go further, and in reply to the question whether they think dogs—that is, the best dogs—really understand what is said to them, never fail to assert with emphasis, “Well, they does; I be sure as they does: ’tisn’t a mossel o’ use to tell folks the like o’ we different.” It was certainly the method adopted in the further training and education of Murphy. As already related, he had been taught to stop when his master stopped, and to come in when he sat or lay down. Thus, though he was generally allowed to range at will over the open lands and be sometimes far distant, in the event of the one he spent his life with lying down to rest for a while, very few minutes would elapse ere the dog would be found making use of shoulder, back, or arm as comfortable things to rest against. Tucked closely in in this way, his face was level with that other’s, as, That was the time to get hold of him; to train him not to run a hare that might come lolloping stupidly along, down wind, into the very jaws of danger; to take no notice of a rabbit that offered insult by drumming with his hind legs on the ground only a few yards off; to tell him strange stories of what he might expect in the years to come when he grew as old as his master, and had learnt to try to take many knocks, to face many problems, to bear and suffer much that might come from strange quarters—had learnt also how to live, and to reap his share of the happiness that the mere fact of living rarely fails to give to all who are not weak-kneed or chicken-hearted. Of course experience, in some ways, Did Murphy understand? According to Job Nutt, the shepherd, who was a philosopher in his way, “of course he did—he know’d he did: his’n did; for why not your’n?” In the face of such definite assertion there was no room for doubt. Nutt had had his lambing-pens, that year, down in the hollow where there was “burra” from the winds. It was snowing when the hurdles and the straw were carted out, and all hands had set to work building the sides of the great square, with their thick, straw walls, their straw roofs, the snug divisions into which the sides were divided, the whole sloping to the south to catch what might be of the pale, wintry sun. Every one knew that But now, to-day, when the two who were always together dropped down from Murphy certainly appeared to feel it. As he and his master sunk the hill, he He was often like this now when they were alone together, though, with others, he would sometimes lapse again into uncertainty and hesitation. Nevertheless, there was no longer doubt that he was on the right road: happiness had in a large The pens were only tenanted now by some thirty ewes, still to lamb, and by those “in hospital,” as Job spoke of them. Four hundred tegs, ewes, and lambs were in fold on the hill, on a clover stubble, or what remained of it, being given crushed swedes and other things, for keep was scarce so early in the year. The shepherd’s boy and his dog were up there with them: only Job and Scot were in the pens. Murphy knew this last, savage though he was; and had duly delivered to him, on many a previous occasion, that strange message of his that compelled the most savage to let him pass free. “Oh! he can come: I likes that dog o’ your’n,” called Job, ordering Scot to his place beneath the bleached and weather-worn “When a yo do lose her lamb, we’s careful to leave the dead un next its mother, for they’ve got hearts same as we. If us was to go for to take the lamb, they ’ould pine. ’Tis nat’ral, ain’t it? Well, you see, ’tis like this. After a bit we takes a lamb from a yo as has a double, like this un here; skins the dead lamb; and ties the skin round t’other’s neck, same as this—see? She’ll let this un suck then; but she ’ouldn’t afore—no fear! They do know their own childern, same as we; just as they knows them as tends So the two men rested against the hurdles in the sun, and Murphy sat solemnly between them: he had become very particular in his manners when with sheep. The disguised lamb was already sucking the ewe; and Job lit his short clay pipe and smiled: he had been up all night. “I’d never have a lamb killed, if it was my way; no’r I wouldn’t. Do you minds last season, when you and yer dog was along? I wus a-going across the Dene with a bottle o’ warm milk, with a bit of a tube stuck in it, if you minds. ’Twas warm milk I’d taken from the cow. Ah, But the talk was not always about sheep, when the folds or the pens were visited, or “Him and his dog” walked with Nutt and other shepherds over the open lands, in the wind and the weather. One day Job had been busy sheepwashing, and the talk turned on dogs, as it often did. “’Tis wonderful what they knows. What don’t ’em know? I says. See that Scot I had—the one afore this un. Well, I was down a-sheepwashing, same as I’ve been just. One o’ the full-mouthed sheep as we had then broke away, and “Well, ’twas like this,” he continued, after a laugh. “A gen’leman was a-rowing by in a boat at the time. And he comes across to our side, when he sees what Scot ‘a’ done, and he says, ‘Shepherd,’ “Then it come about this way. That evening we was a-coming down through the village, and passed ‘The Crown’—that was, Scot and me—and there stood the same gen’leman at the door. So he comes across the road, seeing me, and he says, ‘Well, shepherd,’ he says, ‘will you part with the dog now, for, if so be as you will, I’ll make it five instead of three?’ he says. And that’s truth. And I just looked he between the eyes, like, and says, ‘Part with my dog, Sir?’ I says. ‘Why, Sir, if I wus to part with he, I’ll tell ye what he’d do—he’d pine and die—he’d “It’s not all dogs, though, that are as shepherds’ dogs, Nutt—or capable of being.” Nutt shook his head. The two men and their dogs were on the hillside, with two hundred and fifty tegs moving before them. The sheep were walking with a wide front, but in single files, following those parallel tracks that had marked this steep hillside for centuries, to puzzle strangers. “You can’t make a shepherd’s dog out of every dog, can you?” “Perhaps not, in your meaning. But I do know I could train a’most any dog, if as I’d be so minded.” Scot was on ahead, where he should be. Murphy was close to heel. “Do you mean to say you could train this one to fold sheep?” Job Nutt took a deep draw at his pipe, and turned and looked down at Murphy, now just over three years old. “I likes that dog; well, I’ve allus liked un. Train un to sheep? I believe as I could, were I to be so minded: I do believe as I could.” The two had to part then. It was dusk, and looked like wet; moreover, some wether sheep in the fold, far down in the valley, were “howling” for rain: they were true weather-prophets always. So he might be trained to sheep. Job Nutt’s words kept repeating themselves in the mind—“I believe as I could; I do believe as I could.” What the shepherd had said was a testimony to this dog’s marvellous intelligence; but then every And yet with these characteristics, amounting as they did to a certain softness, there was never any question of his pluck and spirit. Nor was there any limit to it. He had the spirit and “go” of any dozen of his countrymen: what more could possibly be said? At the same time he had the gentleness of a child. He recalled to mind one of those characters that some of us have met, and in strange situations—situations and hours when men’s spirits were on fire, and Nor is such a parallel as far fetched as might at first appear. Given the two, the dog and the man, this dog was to show before the end characteristics equally striking and of scarcely less charm. To It is unnecessary here to refer to the many instances when his dash and high spirit brought about an accident, for all our dogs get into trouble and meet with accidents at times—at least, those of any worth. But it was this dog’s further habit to avoid, when in pain, the company of the one he loved best, and to go invariably to a woman for aid. It was as much as to say that he knew that many men were in such cases worse than useless: a thrust in this instance not without its truth. Thus he came home two miles These are trivialities, no doubt; but they would not be trivialities to some of Us. It is by such that character shows itself—is moulded and made up—for others to estimate and take due note of. And thus it is that whether they are exhibited
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