OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



The rare strangers we meet on our wild career regard us 

 with varied sentiments. Some are obviously filled with 

 compassion over the joggling the occupant of the bath- 

 chair must be enduring. " What can that fool of a man 

 be about to expose that wretchedly delicate woman to 

 such suffering ? " their expression says to us as they pass. 

 Others, on the other hand, are horror-stricken at the spec- 

 tacle of the wifely brutality that condemns this weakly, 

 good-natured man to the task of lugging her about. There 

 is a good deal of uphill work, of course, about us, and he 

 goes a good pace. " YOU ought to get a donkey, 

 Madam/' is their conclusion. 



On two or three occasions good Samaritans have rushed 

 to assist him, with glances of scathing rebuke at this new 

 embodiment of woman's tyranny. 



But they are some of our best days, in spite of outside 

 disapproval. And, to go back to yesterday, we started 

 off with all the dogs in a state of " high cockalorum " 

 Arabella in her most obsequious mood <having been 

 scolded the day before for running away)/ Loki, the 

 Chinaman, trotting on in determined and splendid isolation 

 as usual, it being quite against Chinese etiquette to speak 

 to any fur-brother outside the garden gates ,- Betty, and her 

 father Laddie, secretly determined to go hunting, no matter 

 what execrations should be hurled after them. Laddie 

 comes from a neighbouring house, and insists on adopting 

 us as his family. It is very hard to be brutal and say that 

 we won't be adopted when a pair of the most beautiful 

 cairngorm eyes in all the world are looking up at us out of 

 the dear long, wise, pathetic dog face. In fact, we are not 

 brutal ,- and Laddie comes and goes as he likes. Only he 

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