Short Fiction - P. G. Wodehouse (top ten ebook reader txt) 📗

while they were away, you missed me and tracked me through the woods till you found me here. And then the brigands came back, and they didn’t know you were here, and you kept quite quiet till Dick was quite near, and then you jumped out and bit him and he ran away. And then you bit Ted and you bit Alfred, and they ran away too. And so we were left all alone, and I was quite safe because you were here to look after me. And then⁠—And then⁠—”

His voice died away, and the arm that was round my neck went limp, and I could hear by his breathing that he was asleep. His head was resting on my back, but I didn’t move. I wriggled a little closer to make him as comfortable as I could, and then I went to sleep myself.

I didn’t sleep very well. I had funny dreams all the time, thinking these little animals were creeping up close enough out of the bushes for me to get a snap at them without disturbing Peter.

If I woke once, I woke a dozen times, but there was never anything there. The wind sang in the trees and the bushes rustled, and far away in the distance the frogs were calling.

And then I woke once more with the feeling that this time something really was coming through the bushes. I lifted my head as far as I could, and listened. For a little while nothing happened, and then, straight in front of me, I saw lights. And there was a sound of trampling in the undergrowth.

It was no time to think about not waking Peter. This was something definite, something that had to be attended to quick. I was up with a jump, yelling. Peter rolled off my back and woke up, and he sat there listening, while I stood with my front paws on him and shouted at the men. I was bristling all over. I didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, but the way I looked at it was that anything could happen in those woods at that time of night, and, if anybody was coming along to start something, he had got to reckon with me.

Somebody called, “Peter! Are you there, Peter?”

There was a crashing in the bushes, the lights came nearer and nearer, and then somebody said “Here he is!” and there was a lot of shouting. I stood where I was, ready to spring if necessary, for I was taking no chances.

“Who are you?” I shouted. “What do you want?” A light flashed in my eyes.

“Why, it’s that dog!”

Somebody came into the light, and I saw it was the boss. He was looking very anxious and scared, and he scooped Peter up off the ground and hugged him tight.

Peter was only half awake. He looked up at the boss drowsily, and began to talk about brigands, and Dick and Ted and Alfred, the same as he had said to me. There wasn’t a sound till he had finished. Then the boss spoke.

“Kidnappers! I thought as much. And the dog drove them away!”

For the first time in our acquaintance he actually patted me.

“Good old man!” he said.

“He’s my dog,” said Peter sleepily, “and he isn’t to be shot.”

“He certainly isn’t, my boy,” said the boss. “From now on he’s the honoured guest. He shall wear a gold collar and order what he wants for dinner. And now let’s be getting home. It’s time you were in bed.”

Mother used to say, “If you’re a good dog, you will be happy. If you’re not, you won’t,” but it seems to me that in this world it is all a matter of luck. When I did everything I could to please people, they wanted to shoot me; and when I did nothing except run away, they brought me back and treated me better than the most valuable prize-winner in the kennels. It was puzzling at first, but one day I heard the boss talking to a friend who had come down from the city.

The friend looked at me and said, “What an ugly mongrel! Why on earth do you have him about? I thought you were so particular about your dogs?”

And the boss replied, “He may be a mongrel, but he can have anything he wants in this house. Didn’t you hear how he saved Peter from being kidnapped?”

And out it all came about the brigands.

“The kid called them brigands,” said the boss. “I suppose that’s how it would strike a child of that age. But he kept mentioning the name Dick, and that put the police on the scent. It seems there’s a kidnapper well known to the police all over the country as Dick the Snatcher. It was almost certainly that scoundrel and his gang. How they spirited the child away, goodness knows, but they managed it, and the dog tracked them and scared them off. We found him and Peter together in the woods. It was a narrow escape, and we have to thank this animal here for it.”

What could I say? It was no more use trying to put them right than it had been when I mistook Toto for a rat. Peter had gone to sleep that night pretending about the brigands to pass the time, and when he awoke he still believed in them. He was that sort of child. There was nothing that I could do about it.

Round the corner, as the boss was speaking, I saw the kennel-man coming with a plate in his hand. It smelt fine, and he was headed straight for me.

He put the plate down before me. It was liver, which I love.

“Yes,” went on the boss, “if it hadn’t been for him, Peter would have been kidnapped and scared half to death, and I should be poorer, I suppose, by whatever the scoundrels had chosen to hold me up for.”

I am an honest dog, and hate to obtain credit under