How Animals Talk 



excepting, perhaps, the rare days when I take him 

 woodcock-hunting, when he mildly approves of 

 me. 



One night, after waiting a long time at my feet 

 till I should become animate, Rab followed me 

 hopefully into the dark kitchen, where he had 

 never before been allowed to go. I heard his steps 

 behind me only as far as the door, and thought 

 he was afraid to enter; but when I turned on the 

 light, there he stood in the doorway, " frozen " into 

 a beautiful point, his head upturned to a bell and 

 battery on the wall. Presently a mouse hopped 

 from the battery into a waste-basket on the floor, 

 and Rab pointed the thing stanchly, his whole 

 body quivering with delight when a faint odor stole 

 to his nostrils or a rustle of paper to his ears. 

 From the basket the mouse streaked to the coal- 

 hod, and Rab pointed that, too, and then a crack 

 under a door, and a yawning closet drawer. "My 

 bones!" he said, trying to claw the drawer open. 

 "This is a good place; something is alive here!" 

 Then he came over and sat in front of me, looking 

 up in my face, his head twisted sideways, to de- 

 mand why I had so long kept him out of the only 

 part of the house that was not wholly dormant. 



Though the adventure was twelve months ago, 

 "age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its in- 

 finite variety," for every night Rab comes to me 



[42] 



