Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/120

104 gown and the fur of my couvre-pied; and has no wicked dreams, I can answer for it, of a hare out of breath, or of a partridge shot through the whirring wing; if he sees a ghost at all it is of a little mouse which he killed once by accident. He is as innocent as the first dog, when Eve patted him." In Miss Barrett's correspondence with another literary friend of this period, the late Thomas Westwood, of poetic repute, the name of Flush frequently figures. On one occasion, says Mr. Westwood, she had expressed regret at the increasing plumpness of her pet. Apparently the gentleman had suggested starvation as a remedy, for her remedy runs thus:—

"Starve Flush! Starve Flush! My dear Mr. Westwood, what are you thinking of? And besides, if the crime were lawful and possible, I deny the necessity. He is fat, certainly; but he has been fatter. As I say, sometimes, with a sigh of sentiment—he has been fatter, and he may therefore become thinner. And then, he does not eat after the manner of dogs. I never saw a dog with such a ladylike appetite, nor knew of one by tradition. To eat two small biscuits in succession is generally more than he is inclined to do. When he has meat it is only once a day, and it must be so particularly well cut up and offered to him on a fork, and he is subtly discriminative as to differences between boiled mutton and roast mutton, and roast chicken and boiled chicken, that often he walks away in disdain, and 'will have none of it.' He makes a point, indeed, of taking his share of my muffin and of my coffee, and a whole queen's cake when he can get it; but it is a peculiar royalty of his to pretend to be indifferent even to these—to refuse them when offered to him—to refuse them once, twice,