THE MIXER.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 17, 20 January 1916, Page 11

THE MIXER.

(By P. G. WODEHOUSE.) "

It was one of those things which are really nobody's fault It was not the 'chauffeur's fault, and it was not mine. I ■was having a friendly turn-up with a pal of mine on the side-walk; he ran across the road; I ran after him; and ' ! the car came round the corner and hit mc. It must have been going pretty slow, or I should have been killed. As it was, I just had the breath knocked out of mc. You know how you feel when the butcher catches you just as you arc edging out of the shop with a bit " of meat. It was like that. I wasn't taking much interest in things for a while, but when I did I found that I was the centre of a croup of three—tbe chauffeur, a small boy. and the small boy's nurse. The small boy was very well dressed, • and looked delicate. He was crying. . "Poor doggie," he said. "Poor doggie." "It wasn't my fault, Master Peter." said the chauffeur, respectfully. "He run ■out into the road before I saw him." "That's right," I .put in, for I didn't want to get the. man into trouble. "Oh, he's not dead." said the small boy. "He barked." ' "He pro .ed," said the nursr. "Come away, Master Peter. He might bite you." Women are trying sometimes. It is almost as if they deliberately misunderstood. "I won't come away. I'm going to -take him home with mc and send for the . doctor to come and see him. He's going • to be my dog." This sounded all right. Goodness ' knows. I am no 6nob, and can rough it ■• when required, but I do like comfort when it comes my way, and it seemed to mc that this was where I got it. And I liked the boy. He was the right sort. • - The nurse, a very unpleasant woman, had to make objections. "Master Peter! You can't take him home—a great, rough, fierce, common dog! What would your mother say?" "I'm going to take him home," repeated the child, with a determination which I heartily admired, "and he's going to he my dog. I shall call him Fido." There's altvays a catch in these good things- Fido is a name I particularly ■r : detest. All dogs do. There was a dog ..'called Fido that I knew once, and he used to get awfully sick when we • shouted it after him in the street. Xo doubt there have been respectable dogs ■ called Fido, but to my mind it is a name ..;like Aubrey or Clarence. You may be able to live it down, but you start handi- - capped. However, one must take the 'roush with the smo"oth, and T was prepared to yield 'the point. "If yon wait. Master Peter, your ' lather will buy you a beautiful, lovely dog " . 'T don't want a beautiful, lovely dog. . I want this dog." ".The slur did not wound mc. I have 'io illusions about my looks. Mine is an honest, but not a beautiful face. 7 "It's no use talking," said the chauffeur, grinning. "He means to have him. ■Shove him in. and let's be getting back, or they'll be thinking His Nibs has been kidnapped." !7;"So I was carried to the car. I could •ylave walked, but I had an idea that I ' had better- not. I had made my 'hit a 6 a crippled dog. and a cripple! dog I intended to remain till things got more ■ settled down. •*;. The chauffeur started the car off again. What with the shock I hadTiaH' 'and the luxury of riding in a motor-car, I , Svas a little distrait, and I could not'say: ~icrw far we went. But it must have been miles and miles,.for it seemed a long '..time afterwards that we stopped at the iiggest' house I have ever seen. There ■"were smooth lawns and flower J beds and men in overalls and fountains and trees, away to the right, kennels with . iiout a million dogs in them, all pushing "their noses through the bars and shouting. They all wanted to know who I and what prizes I had won, and ,then 1 realised that I was moving in high .society. IT let the small boy pick mc up ani tarry mc into the house, though it was •all he could do. poor kid. for I was some ueight. He staggered up the steps and along a gre3t hall, and then let mc flop on the carpet of the most beautiful room you ever saw. The carpet was a yard thick. There was a woman sitting in a chair, and as 60on as she saw mc she gave a shriek. ' "T-told Master Peter you would not be pleased, m'lady," said the nurse, who seemed to have taken a positive dislike to mc, "but he would bring the nasty hrute home."

"He's not a nasty brute, mother. He's my iog. and his name's Fido. John ran OVer him in the oar, and I brought him iome to live with us, J love him." • This seemed to make an impression. Peters mother looked as if 6he were weakening. ' "But. Peter, dear. I don't know what your father will say. He's so particular about doge. All his dogs, are prizewinners, pedigree dogs. This is such a Mongrel." ; "A nasty, rough, ugly, common dog, m/lady,"'said the nurse, sticking her oar -in an absolutely—uncalled-for way. Just then a man came into the room. "What on earth?" he said, catching sight of mc. "It's a dog Peter has brought home. He says he wants to keep him." "I'm going to keep him," corrected Peter, firmly. ;,I io like a child that knows his own mind. I was getting fonder of Peter every minute. I reached up and licked his hand. • "See! He knows he's my dog, don't you Fido? He licked mc." "But, Peter, he looks so fierce." This, -fortunately, is true. I do look fierce. It is rather a misfortune for a perfectly Peaceful dog. -'I'm not sure it's safe your laving him." • "He's my dog, and his name's Fido. I'm going to tell cook to give him a bone." IJis mother looked, at his lather, who gave rather a nasty laugh. ■ "My dear Helen." he said, "ever since Peter was horn, ten years ago, he has not asked for a single'thing, to the best of my recollection, which he has not got. Let; us be consistent. I don't approve of this caricature o; a dng, but. if Peter wants him, I suppose he must have him-" /'Very well. But. the first sign of viciousness lie shows, he shall be shot. He. makes mc nervous." So they left it at that, and I went off with Peter to get my bone. After lunch he took mc to the kennels to-introduee mc to the other dogs.. I aid to go. but I knew it would not be Pleasant, and it wasn't. Any dog will you what these prize-ribbon dogs are like. Their heads are so swelled they nave to go into their kennels backwards. It was just as 1 had expected. There Jere mastiffs, terriers, poodles, spaniels, OBlldogs, sheep-dogs, and every other *ffld of dog you can imagine, all prize'Tiffiers at a hundred showa, and every W>|U dog i a the place just «hpred to

•head back and laughed himself sick. I | never felt so email in my life, and. I wae glad .when it .-was over "and Peter took mc off to -the stables.' ' j I was just feeling that I never wanted ito see another dog in my life, when, a j terrier ran out, shouting. As soon as he saw rue, he came up inquiringly, walking very stiff-legged, as terriers do when they sec a stranger. "Wei," I said, "and what particular sort of a prize-winner are you! Tell mc all about the ribbons they gave you at the Crystal Palace and lets get it*over." He laughed in a way that uid mc good. "Guess again!" he said. "Did. you take mc for.one'of the .nuts in the kennels? My name's Jack, ahd 1 belong to one of the grooms." "What" 1 cried. "You aren't Champion Bowlegs Royal or anything of that sort! I'm glad to meet you." So w e rubbed noses, as friendly as you please. It was a treat meeting" one of one's own sort. 1 had had enough of those high-toned dogs, who look at you as if you were something the garbage-man had forgotten to take away. "So you've been talking to the swells, have you?" said Jack. "He would take mc," I said, pointing to Peter. "Oh, you're his latest, are you? Then you're all right—while it lasts." "How do you mean, while it lasts?" "Well, I'll tell you what happened to mc once. Young Peter took a great fancy to mc. Couldn't do enough for mc for awhile. Then he got tired of mc, and out I went. You sec, the trouble is that, while he's a perfectly good kid. he has always had everything he wanted since he was born, and he gets tired of things pretty easy. It was a toy railway that finished mc." Directly he'got that I might not have been on the earth. It was lucky for mc that Dick, my present old man, happened to want a dog to keep down the rats, or goodness knows what might not have happened to mc. They aren't keen on dogs here, unless they've pulled down enough blue ribbons to sink a ship, and mongrels like you and me—no offence— don't last long. I expect you noticed that the growu-ups didn't exactly cheer when you arrived." "They weren't chummy." "Y\ ell. take it from mc, your only chance is to make them chummy. If you do something to please them, they might let you stay on, even though Peter was tired of you." "What sort of thing?" "That's for you to think out. I couldn't? find one. I might tell you to save Peter from drowning. You don't need "a pedigree to do that. But you can't drag the kid to the lake and push ! him in. That's the trouble. A dog gets so few- opportunities. But take it from mc, if you don't do something within two weeks to make yourself solid with , the adults,.you can-make your will. In j two weeks Peter will have forgotten al! about you. It's not his fault. It's the way he has been brought up. His father has all the money on earth, and Peter's the only child. You can't blame him. All I say is, look out for yourself. Well, I'm glad to have met you. Drop in again when you can. I can give you some good ratting, and I have a bone or two put away. So long." It worried mc badly what Jack had said. 1 couldn't get it out of my mind. If it hadn't been for.that, I should have had a great time, for Peter certainly made a lot of fuss of mc. He treated mc as if 1 were the only friend he had. . .And in a way I was. When you are the" only son of a man who has all the i'mpney in the -world,, it seems that you aren't" allowed to"--be like an ordinary kid. They coop you up as if you were something precious that would be contaminated by contact with other children. In all the time that I was at the house - I never met another child. Peter had everything in the world, except someone of his own age to go round with, and that madehim different from any of the liids I had known.

He liked talking to mc. I was the only person -round who really understood him. He would talk by the hour, and 1 would listen with my tongue hanging out and nod now and then. It was worth listening to, what he used to tell mc. He told mc the most surprising things. I didn't know, for instance, that there were any Red Indians in England, but he said there was a chief named Big Cloud who lived in the rhododendron bushes by the lake. I never found-him, though I went carefully through them one day. He also said that there were pirates on the island on the lake. I never s&w them either. What he liked telling me' about best was the city of gold and precious stones which you came to if you walked far enough through the woods at the back of the stables. He was always meaning to go off there some day, and, from the way he described it, I didn't blame him. It was certainly a pretty good city. It was just right for dogs, too, he said, having bones and liver and sweet cakes there and everything else a dog could want. It used to make my mouth water to .listen to him. We were never apart. I was with him all day, and I slept on the mat in his room "at night. But all the time I couldn't get out of my mind what Jack had said: I nearly did once, for it seemed" to mc that I was so necessary to Peter that nothing could separate us; but, just as I was feeling safe, his father gave him a toy aeroplane which flew when you wound it up. . The day he got it."l might not have.been on earth. I trailed along, but he hadn't a word to say to mc. Well, something went wrong with the aeroplane the second day, and it wouldn't fly, and then I was in solid again; but I had done some. hard.thinking and knew just where I stood. I was the newest toy, that's what 1 was, and something newer might come along at any moment, and then it would be tho finish for mc. The only thing for mc was to do something to impress the adults, just as Jack had said. Goodness knc- ws I tried. But everything I. did turned out wrong. There seemed to be a fate about it. One morning, for example, I was trotting round the house early, and I met a fellow I could have sworn was a burglar. He wasn't one of the family, and he wasn't one of tbe servants, and he was hanging round the house in a most suspicious way. I chased him tip a tree. an d it wasn't «ill the family came down to breakfast two hours later that. I found that he was a guest who had arrived overnight, and had come out early to enjoy the freshness of the morn.ng Sd Ihl l sun shining on the- lake, he bang that sort of a man. That didn t help mc much.

Nest, I got in wrong with t.hfiJbpsSi Peter's father. I don't know why. I met him out in the park with another man, both carrying bundles of sticks and looking very'serious and earnest. Justas I reached him, the boss lifted one of the sticks and hit a small white ball with it; He had* never seemed to want to play with ,mc before, and I took it as a great compliment. T raced after the ball, which he had hit quite a long way*, picked it up in my mouth, and brought it back to him.- I laid it at his feet and smiled up at him. "Hit it again," I said. He wasn't pleased at all. He said all sorts of things and tried to kick mc, and that night, when he thought I was not listening, I heard him tell his wife that I wias a pest and would have to be got rid of. That made mc think. And then I put the lid on it. With the best intentions in the world 1 got myself into such a mess that I thought the end had come. To be concluded in To-morrow's Issue.