A BONE OF CONTENTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 3773, 6 July 1926, Page 73

A BONE OF CONTENTION.

(By Kathleen O’Brien in the Daily Chronicle.) Horatio is a dog with many agreeable qualities, but he has his weaknesses, like tihfe rest of us. I have never been able, for instance, to persuade him that the niece of ground in front of the house is a garden and not a cemetery. Why he can’t bury his bones, if he must bury them, in the field where nobody would see them, or even in the back garden, where their protruding excrescences would not lower the prestige of the house in the eyes of incoming visitors, is to me a mystery. Coming in, the other day, from the village, the first thing I saw, protruding from the ground just beside the garden path, was an exceptionally large bone, with out-croppings so numerous and so knobbly that* I was convinced the animal from which it came must have been treble-jointed, buried, of course, or rather half-buried, by Horatio. Horatio was nowhere in sight. I had left him a little way along the road, chatting with the Grayson’s Irish terrier. I unburied that bone, and took it into the house with me, and laid it away in the corner of a cupboard. Filled with just indignation, I had decided suddenly on a plan of action. I determined that Horatio should accompany me to that gaping cavity in the field, that receptacle foT sardine tins, cabbage-stalks, and kindred societv, we call the Mausoleum; and there he should watch me solemnly bury that bone, and should listen to the sermon I would preach to him over its dead body. * * * From the kitchen window I saw Horatio come in at the front gate, wagging his tail in a pleased, anticipative fashion. He made straight for the spot whence I had excavated his bone. When he reached it, he 'stopped short, with a checked suspicious air. He sniffed at the ground, he scratched at it with his paws. He walked all round the spot, ns though he thought he might have been in his own light, and would see his heart’s desire from another angle. He lifted his head and stayed for some seconds in an attitude of pained astonishment. Evidently he thought his might be at fault. “Surely,” said Horatio, “surely this was the spot” ... he fell to again, scratching and sniffing . . • finally he gave it up, and walked disconsolately into the house, bitter and disillusioned. Now I hate to see Horatio depressed. He is such a high-hearted creature as a rule; even his faults are the generous ones of a gay and ardent spirit. But I hardened myself against him. He had done wrong, and must be taught a lesson. I called him sternly. • . • '‘Horatio!” Hearing my voice, he rushed joyfully Into the kitchen. Coals of fire! He thought I was going to help him trace his stolen bone! “Oh, I am glad you're here!” he barked. “I know you'll help me; you've always been a good sport. What do you think eome low, sneaking thief has been and done? Pinched the bone I

put there by the front gate! I've been looking forward to it all the way home. But I know you'll see me righted. You wouldn’t do a mean thing like that when my back was turned!” Ob, trusting Horatio! I turned from him, that I might not see the love and faith in his eyes. And I saw Mrs Grimjaw coming up the garden path. Mrs Grimjaw is the pike in our peaceful pond. She may, I suppose, serve her purpose, after the way of pikes, by keeping us active and moving in our efforts to avoid her. Without Mrs Grimjaw' to dodge we might grow lazy and self-satisfied and corpulent. It was for some such reason, I understand from biologists, pikes and Mrs Grimjaw were made. My heart sank like a stone as I moved to greet her. * # * But I had reckoned without Horatio. He gave one look at me and one look out of the window at Mrs Grimjaw. His intelligent brain saw in a flash, my stricken countenance and the reason of it. “Hold on!” he cried. “Cheer up! I'll save you yet!” And he did. Mrs Grimjaw had brought her Pekinese with her, a horrid beast with a conceited, empty mind. As a rule Horatio ignores it. But this time lie saw in it the weak spot in an enemy's battalion®. He adopted suddenly an attitude of suggestive malice towards the poor silly thing. He made frightful faces at it; he leaped at it from behind chairs, and nearly frightened it to death. He uttered dreadful guttural noises I had never heard him utter before; he rolled his eyes round aw'fully in his head. It nearly fainted with terror. “Take me home!” it howled to its mistress. “I can’t bear it! It’s kil ling me! Take me home!” And she did, shooting venom-laden glances at Horatio, who grinned as he looked up at me with love and faith in his eyes. . . . And that night, when Hortftio was in bed, I stole out into the garden with a trowel and a lantern, and just beside the garden path I dug a hole and placed Horatio’s bone in it, and left it there for Horatio to find, its knobbly excrescences just showing in the moonlight.