that my doubts dissolved. I knew that he and I would get along.
My father’s reaction was of a different kind.
He arrived home at six o’clock that night and he was hardly in the door before he began singing the praises of a springer-spaniel bitch he had just seen. He seemed hardly even to hear at first when Mother interrupted to remark that we already had a dog, and that two would be too many.
When he beheld the pup he was outraged; but the ambush had been well and truly laid and before he could recover himself, Mother unmasked her guns.
“Isn’t he lovely, darling?” she asked sweetly. “And so cheap. Do you know, I’ve actually saved you a hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-six cents? Enough to pay for all your ammunition and for that expensive new gun you bought.”
My father was game, and he rallied quickly. He pointed scornfully at the pup, and in a voice sharp with exasperation he replied:
“But, damn it all—that—that ‘thing’ isn’t a hunting dog!”
Mother was ready for him. “How do you know, dear,” she asked mildly, “until you’ve tried him out?”
There could be no adequate reply to this. It was as impossible to predict what the pup might grow up to be, as it was to deduce what his ancestry might have been. Father turned to me for support, but I would not meet his eye, and he knew then that he had been out-maneuvered.
He accepted defeat with his usual good grace. I can clearly remember, and with awe, what he had to say to some friends who dropped in for a drink not three evenings later. The pup, relatively clean, and already beginning to fatten out a little, was presented to the guests.
“He’s imported,” Father explained in a modest tone of voice. “I understand he’s the only one of his kind in the west. A Prince Albert retriever, you know. Marvelous breed for upland shooting.”
Unwilling to confess their ignorance, the guests looked vaguely knowing. “What do you call him?” one of them asked.
I put my foot in it then. Before my father could reply, I forestalled him.
“I call him Mutt,” I said. And I was appalled by the look my father gave me.
He turned his back on me and smiled confidentially at the guests.
“You have to be rather careful with these highly bred specimens,” he explained, “it doesn’t always do to let them know their kennel names. Better to give them a simple bourgeois name like Sport, or Nipper, or—” and he gagged a trifle—“or even Mutt.”
2
Early Days
DURING his first few weeks with us Mutt astonished us all by his maturity of outlook. He never really was a puppy, at least not after he came to us. Perhaps the ordeal with the ducks had aged him prematurely; perhaps he was simply born adult in mind. In any case he resolutely eschewed the usual antics of puppyhood. He left behind him no mangled slippers, no torn upholstery, and no stains upon the rugs. He did not wage mock warfare with people’s bare feet, nor did he make the night hideous when he was left to spend the dark hours alone in the kitchen. There was about him, from the first day he came to us, an aura of resolution and restraint, and dignity. He took life seriously, and he expected us to do likewise.
Nor was he malleable. His character was immutably resolved before we ever knew him and, throughout his life, it did not change.
I suspect that at some early moment of his existence he concluded there was no future in being a dog. And so, with the tenacity which marked his every act, he set himself to become something else. Subconsciously he no longer believed that he was a dog at all, yet he did not feel, as so many foolish canines appear to do, that he was human. He was tolerant of both species, but he claimed kin to neither.
If he was unique in attitude, he was also unique in his appearance. In size he was not far from a setter, but in all other respects he was very far from any known breed. His hindquarters were elevated several inches higher than his forequarters; and at the same time he was distinctly canted from left to right. The result was that, when he was approaching, he appeared to be drifting off about three points to starboard, while simultaneously giving an eerie impression of a submarine starting on a crash dive. It was impossible to tell, unless you knew him very well indeed, exactly where he was heading, or what his immediate objective might be. His eyes gave no clue, for they were so close-set that he looked to be, and may have been, somewhat cross-eyed. The total illusion had its practical advantages, for gophers and cats pursued by Mutt could seldom decide where he was aiming until they discovered, too late, that he was actually on a collision course with them.
An even more disquieting physical characteristic was the fact that his hind legs moved at a slower speed than did his front ones. This was theoretically explicable on the grounds that his hind legs were much longer than his forelegs—but an understanding of this explanation could not dispel the unsettling impression that Mutt’s forward section was slowly and relentlessly pulling away from the tardy after-end.
And yet, despite all this, Mutt was not unprepossessing in general appearance. He had a handsome black and white coat of fine, almost silky hair, with exceptionally long “feathers” on his legs. His tail was long, limber, and expressive. Although his ears were rather large and limp, his head was broad and high-domed. A black mask covered all of his face except for his bulbous nose, which was pure white. He was not really handsome, yet he possessed the same sort of dignified grotesquerie which so distinguished Abraham Lincoln and the Duke of Wellington.
He also possessed a peculiar savoir-faire that had a disconcerting effect upon strangers. So strong was Mutt’s belief that he was not simply “dog” that he was somehow able to convey this conviction to human onlookers.
One bitterly cold day in January Mother went down-town to do some post-Christmas shopping and Mutt accompanied her. She parted from him outside the Hudson Bay Department Store, for Mutt had strong antipathies, even in those early months, and one of these was directed against the famous Company of Gentlemen Adventurers. Mother was inside the store for almost an hour, while Mutt was left to shiver on the wind-swept pavement.
When Mother emerged at last, Mutt had forgotten that he had voluntarily elected to remain outside. Instead he was nursing a grievance at what seemed to him to be a calculated indifference to his comfort on my mother’s part. He had decided to sulk, and when he sulked he became intractable. Nothing that Mother would say could persuade him to get up off the frigid concrete and accompany her home. Mother pleaded. Mutt ignored her and fixed his gaze upon the steamed-up windows of the Star Café across the street.
Neither of them was aware of the small audience which had formed around them. There were three Dukhobors in their quaint winter costumes, a policeman enveloped in a buffalo-skin coat, and a dentist from the nearby Medical Arts Building. Despite the cold, these strangers stood and watched with growing fascination as Mother ordered and Mutt, with slightly lifted lip and sotto-voce mutters, adamantly refused to heed. Both of them were becoming exasperated, and the tone of their utterances grew increasingly vehement.
It was at this point that the dentist lost touch with reality. He stepped forward and addressed Mutt in man-to-man tones.
“Oh, I say, old boy, be reasonable!” he said reproachfully.
Mutt replied with a murmur of guttural disdain, and this was too much for the policeman.
“What
