and performed the last decent offices in a pretty
flower bed. Vixen the Second attended as
mourner, but behaved with something like
levity, and yet, at the same time, exhibiting an
uneasy curiosity about the basket; otherwise
she showed no concern.

If Vixen had a penchant it was for butchers'
shops: which she discovered afar off, and to
which, if we were on the other side of the
street, she crossed over, in a most circuitous
and artful fashion, and with a guilty creeping
way, quite foreign to her. She never stood
irresolute in front of the entrance, sniffing from
a distance, as some foolish dogs do, who are
repulsed with a kick. She entered privately
under the counter, crept round leisurely, and
invariably secured some choice "swag."
Indeed, some of her robberies were too daring,
as on the day we visited the confectioner's
shop together, when she partook of various
delicacies, yet lingered behind on some
pretext. She was presently seen to emerge at full
speed from the confectioner's door, carrying
with infinite difficulty a large bath bun in her
jaws, the confectioner himself in angry pursuit.
How she got possession of this delicacy could
not be ascertained; he said, "it were when his
back was turned," an affront he seemed to feel.
He was, of course, indemnified, and the daring
shoplifter was foolishly allowed to retain the
property, eating it in pieces of convenient
size. When taken to sit for her portrait, she
imparted a dramatic element into that operation.
The thorough investigation she made;
the sniffing at the chemicals; the speculation as to
the apparatus, camera, &c., which seemed to have
some suspicious connexion with fire arms; the
searching behind the theatrical draperies; but
when business came, her sense of duty at once
asserted itself, and the operator owned that he
had found his human sitters more difficult to
"pose" and far more affected. She arrayed
herself on the cushion placed for her, and gazed
with her bright eyes intently on a bit of biscuit
held out ostentatiously behind the camera.
There was a gentle motion in her tail, but this I
firmly believe she was not conscious of, or she
would have suppressed it. The result was
surprising—I am looking at it now—sharp, clear,
unblurred, and life-like.

The relations of dog and boy are always of
a lively sort. I do not speak of the ill
conditioned boy, who torments his dog, throws
stones at him, half drowns him in water, ties a
tin kettle to the tail. Such I should like to
see hunted hard over the country, with all the
honest dogs of the parish at his heels. But the
good manly boy finds a friend and companion
in his dog, a sympathiser and friend, who is
always glad to see, or to go with, him. The
hotter, the more dusty the day, the longer
the country road, the more welcome to Vixen
the Second. Once the great green park was
reached, with its eddying hills, its delightful
slopes and swards, under the thorns, then
supremest felicity set in; the race, the eating
of grass, the tossing of the head, the fresh
scamper, the drinking at the clear brook side,
the book drawn out on the soft bank, with
reader and book reflected in the brightest and
most flashing of mirrors, while Vixen the
Second is away on short explorings. Now a
whirr from the root of the old tree that stoops
over the water, and the restless investigator has
made out a nest, now a sudden plash and yelp
of disappointment, and the nose is pointed
quivering, as a great water rat leaps in, evicted
from his lodgings.

Sometimes the journey would be enlivened
by incidents of broad farce. She was not without
a sense of the higher grotesque. We once
met a strange wiry old maid in a limp skirt, a
little short cape, a "poke " bonnet of the day of
George the Fourth, and a long spiky parasol.
This lady arose suddenly from a bench where
she had been reading in a pastoral way; the
effect on Vixen was a humorous one; she gave
a start and a short grunt, jumping from this
side to that, and looking back at me, as who
should say, "What sort of Yahoo have we
here?" She quite divined the harmless
character of the apparition, but saw it was
abnormal, and accordingly contented herself
with short barks; then took a short wheel in
front of the apparition, and lay down with her
nose to the ground, like an Indian skirmisher
with a musket pointed.

Or, one might come suddenly on a stray
party of boys with a donkey. One of the
happiest and most satisfactory moments
conceivable for the gamin mind. There would be
a tall fellow or two, who equally relished their
share of the donkey, though scarcely to be
ranked in the category of boys; one of whom,
by superior force, was presently mounted, his
feet almost touching the ground, and then the
whole cortege set off in exquisite delight, the tall
youth riding stiffly and warily, as the donkey
had its ears suspiciously straight and a queer
look on its mouth. Off they set full speed, voices
chattering and screaming with delight, the dust
in clouds, hoofs pattering, and a whole rain of
pokes, thumps, pushes, pinches! Comic, and
so it seems to Vixen, who, in a second, has
her ears down, stoops, and is off at full speed.
She gives low shrieks of enjoyment, and as
the clouds of dust clear, she is seen keeping
up with the party, attaching herself to the
heels of the donkey, giving him every now and
again a short sharp bite. In a moment the
donkey's back shoots up in the air, and Vixen
is rolling over in the dust, and left behind;
in a second moment she is up again, shrieking
and yelping with enjoyment, and again has
her sly bite below, but is more cautious in
avoiding the return stroke. Up goes the back
again, and suddenly there is a great scramble,
and abrupt stillness, with a cloud of dust rising
slowly. As it clears away afar off, I am toiling
on behind. I see that the last uprising of the
back (stimulated by Vixen) has been successful
—that the lazy boy has been shot over
the donkey's head that one of his infantine
aides has been upset in the confusion—that