promptly settles down to make a night of it. He makes a night of it. So do all my other neighbours' dugs, once this brute has reminded them that they have another means of annoying me beside those they are especially kept to inflict. Finally, in the morning, when I give up the game and wearily begin to dress the fiend leaves off, by way of mockery; for well I know that if I get into bed again he will recommence. This dog, I am convinced, is kept not only as a tribulation to me, but as a source of profit to Blenkinsop. The hair-brushes, boot-jacks, shaving-pots, and lumps of coal which the creature attracts to himself during the nights of one month must constitute a very desirable income. Its all a part of the conspiracy against my peace, and if some of the other conspirators are driven to contribute boot-jacks and lumps of coal as well as I, why, it serves them right. Blenkinsop never seems to mind the din himself; it rather pleases him. He calls it "giving tongue." Personally I don't like tongue, and often myself give Blenkinsop some of it, consequently we are not good friends. Blenkinsop chains up this thing of evil out of reach of my garden wall, possibly fearing that I may poison it. He flatters my humanity; if I could get hold of the beast I would not poison it—I would drop it into a barrel of nitric acid and nail down the lid.
"Extravagant friendship."
A man some little way off, a perfect stranger, keeps a Danish boarhound of about the size of an ordinary donkey. This is a fine animal to look at—a long way off—but I do not like her muddy paws on my chest and her very large tongue in my face. She does this sort of thing under pretence of extravagant friendship. I don't want her friendship: I don't want her master's friendship—I don't know him, and it is a liberty for his dog to lick my spectacles off my nose. I don't want anybody's friendship; I only want to be left alone. In my troubles with this dog, it is some consolation to know that I am not the only sufferer. A mild Eastern gentleman, with a dark complexion and a fez cap, lives further up the terrace. He is somewhat of an enigma among the neighbours, and, except that he has had some Mohammedan tracts printed in extraordinary English, which he furtively drops down areas to the scandalization of orthodox, there is no precise indication of his nationality. The Misses Pegram call him a "native"—as though he were an oyster. He is a small man, and is almost as much a victim of that boarhound's unwelcome attentions as myself; not quite so much, of course, because, as I say, it is all a conspiracy. Five times out of six, when this gentle Oriental passes my window, I observe as he approaches two (or more) immense muddy paw-marks on his otherwise well-brushed coat—it is a singular property of this dog that her paws are always muddy, in any weather. When I see these paw-marks I know at once that I have only to wait until he passes to see an immense muddy or dusty patch in the rear of that respectable "native"; he always goes down before the boarhound's onslaught. He told me so, once, himself. I had observed the dog approaching in an adjoining square, and retired up a secluded turning; and the "native," from another side of the square, did the same. He understood our common motive, and said, "That canine tyke too much cheek got it; he put feets on shoulder, you sit down on thoroughfare."
There are other dogs whose annoyances
