Читать книгу Dogtown. Being Some Chapters from the Annals of the Waddles Family Set Down in the Language of Housepeople онлайн

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It was impossible to comb or pick the straws and burrs from Hamlet’s coat, so next day one of the grooms clipped him close all over and gave him a bath. When he went, meek and shivering with mortification, to his mistress’s room, where she was sitting alone, as the poisoning was doing its work on the scratched wrists and shell-pink ears, she hardly recognized her pet in the lanky black dog with only a tail-tuft left of his curls. As she did not speak, he went over to a low stool, and putting his nose between his paws, “said his prayers,” as she had often made him do for punishment when he had disobeyed.

Then, in spite of her misery, she burst into a hearty laugh, and bade him go out and play with the other dogs, which he very readily did, feeling, if antics tell anything, like a little boy who has just put off petticoats. After his clipping Hamlet was cordially received in Dogtown, and considered one of the boys, and whether or not his hair was allowed to grow or if he ever again wore a scented mustache, remains to be seen.