Page:Wren--The young stagers.djvu/78

60 his misery. Sometimes a doctor would offer to do it. Sort of 'Dogs Painlessly Extracted' idea, but Grandfather would get purple at the mere thought of it.

"‘Sir!' he would say to the doctor who dared to suggest such a thing. 'This hand has fed that faithful hound for twenty years. This hand has fondled him and cherished him;—and no other hand but this shall—er—help him over his last stile.' That was the sort of way the old boy talked, y'know. Pompous. "

"What'th ‘pompottth’?" inquired the Vice.

"That is," replied Buster, evading explanations.

"As a matter of fact, it was a groom's hand that had done the feeding, but that's a detail."

"A dog's tail?" queried the Vice intelligently.

"Sit on your head, Vice," requested the President.

"Anyhow, this is a dog's tale, Mr. Vice," replied Buster, and the end of it is this:—

"At last poor old Grandfather screwed himself to the point of doing the dreadful deed, and he decided that as W. H. Freeze-me-tail had been a sporting-dog all his life, and a fine gun-dog, he ought to die by being shot, and not by being