we learned a good deal about what was good to eat and what wasn’t, too. once delia left a tin pan filled with some whitish stuff on the back steps and i ate quite a lot of it before she came out and found what i was doing. when she did she cried “cook! cook! one of the puppies has eaten the starch!” of course i went right away, as i didn’t want to have any trouble about it, and pretty soon i felt very funny inside and crawled into a stall where it was quiet and dark. but william found me after a while and made me swallow something that didn’t taste at all nice and pretty soon i felt better. i didn’t think it was very kind of delia to tell william what i had done, but maybe it was all for the best, because until he made me swallow the nasty medicine i was pretty sure i was going to die. starch and soap taste all right but they aren’t good for puppies. i found that out.
it seems that we all have to learn a lot of things by what mother calls “sad experience.” like bees. bees look very much like flies but they’re different. once freya and i saw some bees going in and out of a tiny hole in the ground back of the stable. they were very large bees and growled. we wondered why they went into the hole and so we scratched at it to find out. while we were doing it quite a lot of bees came out and freya gave a yelp and began to paw at her nose. she looked so funny that i laughed at her and asked why she did it. then i gave a yelp and forgot all about freya. those bees were very angry and sat down on us wherever our hair was thin, and every time they sat down they scratched. we didn’t stay there long, i can tell you! we ran as fast as we could run, but the bees flew right along with us and chased us way down to the duck-pond. by that time i had five scratches and freya had four and they hurt a good deal and swelled up. we licked the scratches and whined and after a while we rolled over in the mud at the edge of the pond and that made them feel better. but they didn’t stop hurting for a long time. after that if a bee came buzz-buzzing around us we always made believe we didn’t see it. but we got up very quietly and moved away.
then there are balls. some balls are nice to play with and chew on. they are made of rubber. william had one and he used to throw it, and freya and i, and sometimes mother and father, too, would scamper after it and see who could get it and bring it back to him. if freya got it i always took it away from her, because i am bigger and stronger than she is. besides, she’s only a girl dog! once freya found the ball in the harness room, where it had dropped off a shelf, and so she took it out under a tree and chewed on it until there was a hole in it. then she wanted to see what was in the hole and so she tore the ball all to pieces. there wasn’t a thing in it. she ate some of the pieces and that afternoon the doctor came and stayed quite a long time and freya was very sick. william got another ball, but freya would never go near it.
at the side of the house toward the orchard there was a lawn where the family played a game they called croquet. they had mallets and a lot of different coloured wooden balls and they made the balls roll by hitting them with the mallets. once freya and i were there and we chased the balls. the master laughed at us and said we mustn’t do it. but he didn’t really care, and the baby, who was there with nurse, clapped her hands and thought it was fine fun. so did we. we would run at the balls and bark at them and try to pick them up in our mouths. but we couldn’t because they were too big. the master and mistress laughed and laughed at us. then i saw a ball rolling along very fast and i made believe it was a rat and ran for it as hard as i could go. but when i tried to bite it it wouldn’t stop but kept right on rolling. and so i rolled too. i rolled several times and when i found my feet i hurried off with a terrible pain in my head. rubber balls and wooden balls are very different, like flies and bees.
about that time we had our first collars. mine was black and freya’s was brown. william said that was so people could tell us apart. i thought it was very silly of him because we didn’t look at all alike. i was bigger and, if i do say it myself, much finer looking. but that is what he said. the collars had little round brass tags on them and on the tags were numbers. they were quite like the collars that father and mother wore, only a great deal smaller, and we were very proud of them. william put a strap from freya’s collar to mine and then snapped a leash on to the strap and said “come on.” i trotted right along, but freya sat down and wouldn’t budge an inch. so, of course, i had to pull her all the way to the house. it was very hard work for me, and freya didn’t like it much, either. she howled all the way up the drive and william just laughed at her. i was quite ashamed of her for acting so. the master and mistress and the baby came out to see us and i tried to put a good face on it by laughing too, but freya just howled and howled! girl dogs are very silly sometimes! then the master said:
“take the leash off, william, and see what they’ll do.”
so he did and i ran up to the mistress and freya tried to run toward the stable. i wasn’t going to have that, so i dragged freya after me and the baby was between us and the strap upset her into the flower bed. i was sorry about it, but i thought we had better not stay there any longer, so i turned and ran as hard as i could, pulling freya after me, toward the orchard. the orchard is quite a large place and one needn’t be caught there unless one wants to. but freya, of course, had to spoil it all. when we came to a tree she went on the other side of it and the strap held us there. i told her to come around my side, but she just whimpered and tugged at the strap and paid no attention to what i said. of course i wasn’t going to give in to her whim, so i pulled and pulled and would have pulled her around the right way at last if william hadn’t come up just then and caught us. we got a cuffing, which was all freya’s fault for being so obstinate.
