Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/196

 cook the dinner themselves, assisted by the housemaid—a willing-enough girl, but necessarily inexperienced,—we felt that the woman was being subjected to persecution.

My uncle, after this, decided that the dog's training must be no longer neglected. The man next door but one always talked as if he knew a lot about sporting matters, and to him my uncle went for advice as to how to set about it.

"Oh yes," said the man, cheerfully, "very simple thing, training a bull-dog. Wants patience, that's all."

"Oh, that will be all right," said my uncle; "it can't want much more than living in the same house with him before he's trained does. How do you start?"

"Well, I'll tell you," said the next-door-but-one man.

"You take him up into a room where there's not much furniture, and you shut the door and bolt it."

"I see," said my uncle.

"Then you place him on the floor in the middle of the room, and you go down on your knees in front of him, and begin to irritate him."

"Oh!"

"Yes,—and you go on irritating him until you have made him quite savage."

"Which, from what I know of the dog, won't take long," observed my uncle, thoughtfully.

"So much the better. The moment he gets savage he will fly at you."

My uncle agreed that the idea seemed plausible.

"He will fly at your throat," continued the next-door-but-one man, "and this is where you will have to be careful. As he springs towards you, and before he gets hold of you, you must hit him a fair straight blow on his nose, and knock him down."

"Yes, I see what you mean."