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“He’s sweet!A Rexie, a little Rexie!”

“A filthy little nuisance!Don’t think I’ll put up with him.”

And to tell the truth, he wasdirty at first. How could he be otherwise, so young!But my mother hated him for it. And perhapsthis was the real start of their hostility. For he lived in the house with us. He would wrinkle his nose and show his tiny dagger-teethin fury when he was thwarted, and his growls of real battle-rage against my mother rejoiced us as much as they angered her. But at last she caught him in flagrante[note: From ‘in flagrante delicto’–red-handed, (caught) in the act (Latin). Literally, ‘with the crime still blazing’. ]. She
pounced on him, rubbed his nose in the mess, and flung him out into the yard. He yelped with shame and disgust and indignation. I shall never forget the sight of him as he rolled over, then tried to turn his head away from the disgust of his own muzzle, shaking his little snout with a sort of horror, and trying to sneeze it off. My sister gave a yell of despair, and dashed out with a rag and a pan of water, weeping wildly. She sat in the middle of the yard with the befouledpuppy, and shedding bitter tears she wiped him and washed him clean. Loudly she reproached my mother.”Look how much bigger you are than he is. It’s a shame, it’s a shame!”

“You ridiculous little lunatic, you’ve undone all the good it would do him, with your soft ways. Why is my life made a curse with animals!Haven’t I enough as it is—”

There was a subdued tension afterwards. Rex was a little white chasm between us and our parent.

He became clean. But then another tragedy loomed. He must be docked. His floating puppy-tail must be docked short. This time my father was the enemy. My mother agreed with us that it was an unnecessary cruelty. But my father was adamant.”The dog’ll look a fool all his life, if he’s not docked.”And there was no getting away from it. To add to the horror, poor Rex’s tail must be bittenoff. Why bitten? we asked aghast. We were assuredthat biting was the only way. A man would take the little tail and just nip it through with his teeth, at a certain joint. My father lifted his lips and bared his incisors, to suit the description. We shuddered. But we were in the hands of fate.

Rex was carried away, and a man called Rowbotham bit off the superfluity of his tail in the Nags Head, for a quart of best and bitter. We lamented our poor diminished puppy, but agreed to find him more manly and comme il faut[note: Proper. Literally, ‘as it should be’ (French)]. We should always have been ashamed of his little whip of a tail, if it had not been shortened. My father said it had made a man of him.

Perhaps it had. For now his true nature came out. And his true nature, like so much else, was dual. First he was a fierce, canine little beast, a beast of rapine and blood. He longed to hunt, savagely. He lusted to set his teeth in his prey. It was no joke with him. The old canine Adam stood first in him, the dog with fangs and glaring eyes. He flew at us when we annoyed him. He flew at all intruders, particularly the postman. He was almosta peril to the neighbourhood. But not quite. Because close second in his nature stood that fatal need to love, the besoin d’aimer[note: The need to love (French). ]which at last makes an end of liberty. He had a terrible, terrible necessityto love, and this trammelled the native, savage hunting beast which he was. He was torn between two great impulses: the native impulse to hunt and kill, and the strange, secondary, supervening impulse to love and obey. If he had been left to my father and mother, he would have run wild and got himself shot. As it was, he loved us children with a fierce, joyous love. And we loved him.