Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/332

294 a bone. What It wanted it for, I've no idea: certainly there was no meat on it"

A strange sensation came over me, that I had heard all this, or something exactly like it, before: and I almost expected her next words to be "perhaps he meant to make a cloak for the winter?" However what she really said was "and my father tried to account for it by some wretched joke about pro bono publico. Well, the dog laid down the bonenot in disgust with the pun, which would have shown it to be a dog of tastebut simply to rest its jaws, poor thing! I did pity it so! Won't you join my Charitable Association for supplying dogs with pockets? How would you like to have to carry your walking-stick in your mouth?"

Ignoring the difficult question as to the raison d'être of a walking-stick, supposing one had no hands, I mentioned a curious instance, I had once witnessed, of reasoning by a dog. A gentleman, with a lady, and child, and a large dog, were down at the end of a pier on which I was walking. To amuse his child, I suppose, the gentleman put down on the