Jim and His Dog—Part I
JIM CURTIS was the son of a Devonshire farm labourer. He was just eleven years old, and the eldest of six children. One of his best friends was a little dog called Spot. The evening Jim’s father brought Spot home in his pocket as a little puppy and gave him to Jim, there had been a great discussion about his name. Jim had gone to bed with the important question still undecided; and as he lay awake thinking of the names of all the dogs he had ever heard of, it struck him that as his puppy (which was fawn-coloured) had a black patch on one side of his head, Spot would be the name for him, and Spot he was from that time forth.
Spot was not a handsome dog. He had long legs and much too long a tail, but Jim was very fond of him. Sometimes when he was standing with him in his arms close to the Squire’s gate, or sitting just inside it with Spot bolted upright beside him on the bank, the keepers, as they passed him on their way home, would call out, “How much for your dog, young ‘un?” and then wink at each other and laugh.
“He’s a better watch-dog than all their sporting dogs, I know,” thought Jim. Spot was beautiful in Jim’s opinion.
Now and then, when Jim had been careless about his clothes, his father would say to him, half for fun, “You must look out, Jim, or I shall have to sell Spot to buy you some new ones. If the worst comes to the worst, I shall, you may depend.”
Jim would ponder over these words, sitting by the fire in the evening, until his father stowed away his book on the high mantelpiece, and his mother gathered up all the little patched petticoats and darned stockings she had been occupied upon; and they stumbled up the old broken stairs to bed. Even then sometimes Jim would have strange dreams about Spot, fancying that a fierce-looking man was trying to drag him by main force away from him, or something of the sort, until waking suddenly, he would stretch out his hand to feel if he was close to him as usual; and then he would pass his hand fondly over his dog Spot’s head, and fall asleep again.
As for Spot, he returned Jim’s affection to the full, as dogs will do, when they get a good master.
Jim was sitting one evening well inside the great, wide, warm chimney, learning his lessons, which were written on his slate—twelve words of spelling, a sum in compound addition, and lower down a piece of grammar.
“Nouns are the names of persons, animals, places, and things. They are declined by number, person, and case. Articles are little words placed before nouns, to mark the extent of their signification.” The more Jim read this piece of Greek, the less he understood it. He was sure he should never be able to batter it into his brains; so he turned once more in despair to the spelling, and to the figures that seemed to be standing on their heads somehow; but perhaps it was that his own head felt particularly heavy and stupid.
His mother, who had been watching him for some time, told him to put his slate away, and come and put his feet into hot mustard and water.
Mrs. Curtis was very strong in simple remedies. “Mustard to their feet and to their chests keeps out the doctor many a time,” she sometimes said.
“Jim’s got a rare cold,” she was saying this evening.
Jim, for his part, was glad enough to be doctored by his mother, and carried up afterward in his father’s strong arms to bed. But the next day he had a rash, which his mother knew well to be the measles. She gave a little sigh as she resigned herself to the certainty that all the children would get it in turn. She was thankful it was not the scarlet fever again, which they had had the year before. They sickened, in good truth, one after the other, and were all very good and patient except Polly, who came next the baby, and who was as naughty as she could well be. She would have nothing to say of the broth sent from the Vicarage, and cried for the nice cool drink she had had when she had the fever, which Jim at last remembered to have been lemonade. So Mrs. Curtis ventured to beg a little, and from that moment Polly revived. In a fortnight they were all out again, rejoicing in the warm autumn sunshine.
The first day their mother had been able to turn them out of doors with an easy mind, she determined she would have a grand day’s washing; and she had just set to work at her second batch of clothes when she saw through the latticed window a woman coming hurriedly up the garden-path to the door. Somehow she felt that something was wrong, and her heart gave a great bound as the woman came in.
“Now, dont’ee be scared, Mrs. Curtis,” said the kind friend; “accidents will happen.”
“What is it?” said Jim’s mother faintly.
“He’s hurt his leg, your master has; broken it, I fancy. They’re bringing him home on a shutter.”
Mrs. Curtis never heard the last words; she was already running down the road toward the farm, where she knew her husband was cutting trees that morning. She soon came up to where four stout labourers were plodding along solemnly with her husband on their shoulders, stretched on a shutter, as the neighbour had said. They brought him in, and laid him on the old settle, and then they all looked at him doubtfully, and after a few not very consoling words to Mrs. Curtis, turned round again, and marched out.
The neighbours now came trooping in, but Jim’s mother looked round anxiously.
“Run, Jim, run for the doctor; you can run fastest.”
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