HORATIO’S FRIEND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19946, 13 November 1926, Page 19

HORATIO’S FRIEND.

About a week ago Horatio’s manner began suddenly to change. Horatio, I must say, in spite of an inclination to show off a little before strangers —cock his ears knowingly at them, or flourish his tail as though it were a panache —has always, till a week ago, maintained a courteous and respectful manner towards myself. Then, all at once, something seemed to come over him. He began, when he thought anyone was looking at him, to strike attitudes. He would roll his eyes in an affected way, or sit gazing out of the window with an intense expression, pretending not to hear when 1 spoke to him. He introduced a devil-may-care swagger into his gait. Instead of politely waiting for me to enter the house before him, he would walk in first with a possessive, master-of-tbe-house air that was not only ungentlemanly, but completely without justification. More than once he was deliberately impertinent. Horatio was, in fact, showing off with a

vengeance. For a day or two I could not understand it. Then, looking for him in the garden one afternoon, when I had called him three times without eliciting any reply, I came upon his lordship’ lolling about in the chaise longue, coolly spreading himself over my new art linen cushions. I was thunderstruck at his impudence; but, just .as I was about to loose some of my thunder upon him, I saw that he was not alone. Squatting on the ground beside the chaise longue, and gazing up at Horatio in a dumb, sycophantic way. was an animal of the lower canine species, something between cocker spaniel and a wire-haired terrier, with a faint suggestion of a bloodhound strain in the droop of his ears, and of a pekinese influence about the cut of the tail. Horatio, I saw, had found a friend. Horatio is an impressionable animal, easily responsive to external stimuli. Horatio’s new friend, I soon realised was one of those external stimuli that bring into relief the least admirable parts of one’s personality. It was not that he was base, but that he was servile. He knew himself too faint-spirited for the performance of those deeds of daring and prowess that, like most timid people, he admired so. pathetically in others. Inclined to shrink from contact with the world, feeling himself a poor thing, he idealised those virile and masculine attributes he would rather have possessed than any moral or intellectual qualities. It was plain that he looked up to Horatio as to a kind of demi-god. In a way, looking at Horatio from his standpoint, I could understand it; for Horatio is a handsome, robustious, large-limbed creature, and carries himself at times with a haughty lord-of-the-manor bearing that might easily deceive those who did not know, as I did, that he had just buried a bone in the rose-bed and was trying to look as if he hadn’t. Horatio’s friend, it was obvious, was doing Horatio no good; for Horatio’s is i nature that cannot stand a great deal of applause. He began by calling on Horatio two or three times a day. Then he too 1, to coming for walks with us, keeping a few respectful paces behind, in the dust shaken from Horatio’s feet. Before ion ft he was Horatio’s shadow and humble adorer. Horato, of course, loved it. He tooK up a patronising, My-dear-Watson kind of attitude towards the foolish creature. He showed off, shamelesslv. He strutted. Hj began making sabre-rattling gestures to wards perfectly mild-mannered, unaggressive acquaintances—the milkman’s dog, the collie at Whiterockets, the Labrador retriever at Three Elms Farm—just to show his admirer what a devil of a fellow he was. He kept open a special eye fer cats, whom as a rule he completely ignored, that he might leap at them witn horrid curses, and chase them, spitting, Up trees. I could see him, when he condo scended to address a few words to the fawner at his heels, telling him preposte. ously tall stories about his reckless past while the other gaped at him in a hero worship that was rooted in the deep soil of his own self-abasement. But Horatio is sobered now. The awakening came as a rude shock to him, as it conics to all o' us when our selfesteem is suddenly thrown down from its supporting pedestal of vanity. The lest of character comes in in the recovery or the collapse from this most unkind of externa] stimuli. Horatio, I am glad to say, iccovered. For there is stuff in Horatio, and his qualities are on as generous a scale as his defects.

Going outside one morning to show off a new pose ho had just thought of, he wa.amazed and hurt to find his audience not arrived. He went to the gate to see what had happened. There, in the roao, Horatio’s friend was fawning at the feel of the milkman’s dog. iust as he used to faun at Horatio’s. For it is one of the saddest aspects of the feeble, self-prostrat ing nature that it is so indiscriminate m the giving of its affection. The object oi worship matters little, so the bestowal '*f it may not be turned away. Horatio crept back, stricken to the soui The milkman’s dog! A fellow with about as much glamour M-iut him as a stale bis cuit! And the creature showing him the same servile admiration it had accorded all the splendours of Horatio! Horatio -am? and laid his head in my lap. “I have been a fool,” he said. ‘For give me !” ; “That’s all right, Horatio,” I said, pat ting him. I did not press the lesson home, for I, saw there was no need. Later, we went out for a walk together, Horatio courteously standing aside at the door to let me pass.