Читать книгу The Story My Doggie Told to Me онлайн

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Then, of course, there was the Master, and the Mistress, and, best of all, the Baby. She wasn’t exactly a baby, because she was almost two years old, but every one called her the Baby. We all loved her very much. She used to take us up one by one and kiss us on our noses and call us “Booful dogums” and hug us. Sometimes she hugged so hard it hurt, but we never let her know it. She had golden hair and blue eyes and two little fat red cheeks and was always laughing. Her real name was Mildred. The Master was a very big man, so big that I could only see to the tops of his riding-boots when I was little. He had a very deep, gruff voice and called us “Those little rascals!” But we knew he didn’t mean it and we liked him. But we liked the Baby best of all, and after her the Mistress, who was the Baby’s mother. She was quite small for a grown-up and had such a nice voice that we loved to hear it and would all go running to the front of the cage or the yard fence when she came.

The Family—we called the Master, the Mistress and the Baby the Family—lived in the country in a beautiful white house with green blinds that stood on top of a little hill and had trees and fields all around it. There was a pond, too, and a brook that ran out of it. That’s where the ducks lived. Ducks are very funny things. Later I’ll tell you something about them. There was a stable, as well, and outside the stable was a yard fenced in with wire netting, and in the corner of the yard was what they called the Kennel. That was where I was born. The yard was quite large and after we were allowed to run around in it, we had a fine time. There was so much to see from it: the house and the duck-pond and the country road, with people going by that had to be barked at, and the place where William washed the carriages when the weather was fine, and many other things. Also, there were squirrels in the trees, and birds, too. And there was Ju-Ju.