The first arrival was on four legs: Pepper, a
terrier with a taste for sounds. Pepper arrived cautiously, though in
a state of profound curiosity, and, being too wise to trust at once to
his ears, avenue of sense by which we are all so much oftener deceived
than by any other, he first smelled the musician carefully and
minutely all round. What he learned by this he and his Creator alone
know, but apparently something reassuring; for, as soon as he had
thoroughly snuffed his Orpheus, he took up a position exactly opposite
him, sat up high on his tail, cocked his nose well into the air, and
accompanied the violin with such vocal powers as Nature had bestowed
on him. Nor did the sentiment lose anything, in intensity at all
events, by the vocalist. If David's strains were plaintive, Pepper's
were lugubrious; and what may seem extraordinary, so long as David
played softly the Cerberus of the stableyard whined musically, and
tolerably in tune; but when he played loud or fast poor Pepper got
excited, and in his wild endeavors to equal the violin vented dismal
and discordant howls at unpleasantly short intervals. All this
attracted David's attention, and he soon found he could play upon
Pepper as well as the fiddle, raising him and subduing him by turns;
only, like the ocean, Pepper was not to be lulled back to his musical
ripple quite so quickly as he could be lashed into howling frenzy.
While David was thus playing, and Pepper showing a fearful broadside
of ivory teeth, and flinging up his nose and sympathizing loudly and
with a long face, though not perhaps so deeply as he looked, suddenly
rang behind David a chorus of human chuckles.
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