When I found that I was under discussion, I opened my eyes. Master was standing there, looking down at me, and by his side the man who had just said I was ugly enough. The man was a thin man, about the age of a barman and smaller than a policeman. He had patched brown shoes and black trousers.
‘But he’s got a sweet nature,’ said master.
This was true, luckily for me. Mother always said, ‘A dog without influence or private means, if he is to make his way in the world, must have either good looks or amiability.’ But, according to her, I overdid it. ‘A dog,’ she used to say, ‘can have a good heart, without chumming with every Tom, Dick, and Harry he meets. Your behaviour is sometimes quite un-doglike.’ Mother prided herself on being a one-man dog. She kept herself to herself, and wouldn’t kiss anybody except master—not even Fred.
Now, I’m a mixer. I can’t help it. It’s my nature. I like men. I like the taste of their boots, the smell of their legs, and the sound of their voices. It may be weak of me, but a man has only to speak to me and a sort of thrill goes right down my spine and sets my tail wagging.
I wagged it now. The man looked at me rather distantly. He didn’t pat me. I suspected—what I afterwards found to be the case—that he was shy, so I jumped up at him to put him at his ease. Mother growled again. I felt that she did not approve.
‘Why, he’s took quite a fancy to you already,’ said master.
The man didn’t say a word. He seemed to be brooding on something. He was one of those silent men. He reminded me of Joe, the old dog down the street at the grocer’s shop, who lies at the door all day, blinking and not speaking to anybody.
Master began to talk about me. It surprised me, the way he praised me. I hadn’t a suspicion he admired me so much. From what he said you would have thought I had won prizes and ribbons at the Crystal Palace. But the man didn’t seem to be impressed. He kept on saying nothing.
When master had finished telling him what a wonderful dog I was till I blushed, the man spoke.
‘Less of it,’ he said. ‘Half a crown is my bid, and if he was an angel from on high you couldn’t get another ha’penny out of me. What about it?’
A thrill went down my spine and out at my tail, for of course I saw now what was happening. The man wanted to buy me and take me away. I looked at master hopefully.
‘He’s more like a son to me than a dog,’ said master, sort of wistful.
‘It’s his face that makes you feel that way,’ said the man, unsympathetically. ‘If you had a son that’s just how he would look. Half a crown is my offer, and I’m in a hurry.’
‘All right,’ said master, with a sigh, ‘though it’s giving him away, a valuable dog like that. Where’s your half-crown?’
The man got a bit of rope and tied it round my neck.
I could hear mother barking advice and telling me to be a credit to the family, but I was too excited to listen.
‘Good-bye, mother,’ I said. ‘Good-bye, master. Good-bye, Fred. Good-bye everybody. I’m off to see life. The Shy Man has bought me for half a crown. Wow!’
I kept running round in circles and shouting, till the man gave me a kick and told me to stop it.
So I did.
I don’t know where we went, but it was a long way. I had never been off our street before in my life and I didn’t know the whole world was half as big as that. We walked on and on, and the man jerked at my rope whenever I wanted to stop and look at anything. He wouldn’t even let me pass the time of the day with dogs we met.
When we had gone about a hundred miles and were just going to turn in at a dark doorway, a policeman suddenly stopped the man. I could feel by the way the man pulled at my rope and tried to hurry on that he didn’t want to speak to the policeman. The more I saw of the man the more I saw how shy he was.
‘Hi!’ said the policeman, and we had to stop.
‘I’ve got a message for you, old pal,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s from the Board of Health. They told me to tell you you needed a change of air. See?’
‘All right!’ said the man.
‘And take it as soon as you like. Else you’ll find you’ll get it given you. See?’
I looked at the man with a good deal of respect. He was evidently someone very important, if they worried so about his health.
‘I’m going down to the country tonight,’ said the man.
The policeman seemed pleased.
‘That’s a bit of luck for the country,’ he said. ‘Don’t go changing your mind.’
And we walked on, and went in at the dark doorway, and climbed about a million stairs and went into a room that smelt of rats. The man sat down and swore a little, and I sat and looked at him.
Presently I couldn’t keep it in any longer.
‘Do we live here?’ I said. ‘Is it true we’re going to the country? Wasn’t that policeman a good sort? Don’t you like policemen? I knew lots of policemen at the public-house. Are there any other dogs here? What is there for dinner? What’s in that cupboard? When are you going to take me out for another run? May I go out and see if I can find a cat?’
‘Stop that yelping,’ he said.
‘When we go to the country, where shall we live? Are you going to be a caretaker at a house? Fred’s father is a caretaker at a big house in Kent. I’ve heard Fred talk about it. You didn’t meet Fred when you came to the public-house, did you? You would like Fred. I like Fred. Mother likes Fred. We all like Fred.’
I was going on to tell him a lot more about Fred, who had always been one of my warmest friends, when he suddenly got hold of a stick and walloped me with it.
‘You keep quiet when you’re told,’ he said.
He really was the shyest man I had ever met. It seemed to hurt him to be spoken to. However, he was the boss, and I had to humour him, so I didn’t say any more.
We went down to the country that night, just as the man had told the policeman we would. I was all worked up, for I had heard so much about the country from Fred that I had always wanted to go there. Fred used to go off on a motor-bicycle sometimes to spend the night with his father in Kent, and once he brought back a squirrel with him, which I thought was for me to eat, but mother said no. ‘The first thing a dog has to learn,’ mother used often to say, ‘is that the whole world wasn’t created for him to eat.’
It was quite dark when we got to the country, but the man seemed to know where to go. He pulled at my rope, and we began to walk along a road with no people in it at all. We walked on and on, but it was all so new to me that I forgot how tired I was. I could feel my mind broadening with every step I took.
Every now and then we would pass a very big house, which looked as if it was empty, but I knew that there was a caretaker inside, because of Fred’s father. These big houses belong to very rich people, but they don’t want to live in them till the summer, so they put in caretakers, and the caretakers have a dog to keep off burglars. I wondered if that was what I had been brought here for.
‘Are you going to be a caretaker?’ I asked the man.
‘Shut up,’ he said.
So I shut up.
After we had been walking a long rime, we came to a cottage. A man came out. My man seemed to know him, for he called him Bill. I was quite surprised to see the man was not at all shy with Bill. They seemed very friendly.
‘Is that him?’ said Bill, looking at me.
‘Bought him this afternoon,’ said the man.
‘Well,’ said Bill, ‘he’s ugly enough. He looks fierce. If you want a dog, he’s the sort of dog you want. But what do you want one for? It seems to me it’s a lot of trouble to take, when there’s no need of any trouble at all. Why not do what I’ve always wanted to do? What’s wrong with just fixing the dog, same as it’s always done, and walking in and helping yourself?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s wrong,’ said the man. ‘To start with, you can’t get at the dog to fix him except by day, when they let him out. At night he’s shut up inside the house. And suppose you do fix him during the day what happens then? Either the bloke gets another before night, or else he sits up all night with a gun. It isn’t like as if these blokes was ordinary blokes. They’re down here to look after the house. That’s their job, and they don’t take any chances.’