The Man with Two Left Feet by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

education. ‘If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,’ mother used to say, ‘bark. It may be someone who has business there, or it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to be heard and not seen.’
    I lifted my head and yelled. I have a good, deep voice, due to a hound strain in my pedigree, and at the public house, when there was a full moon, I have often had people leaning out of the windows and saying things all down the street. I took a deep breath and let it go.
    â€˜Man!’ I shouted. ‘Bill! Man! Come quick! Here’s a burglar getting in!’
    Then somebody struck a light, and it was the man himself. He had come in through the window.
    He picked up a stick, and he walloped me. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t see where I had done the wrong thing. But he was the boss, so there was nothing to be said.
    If you’ll believe me, that same thing happened every night. Every single night! And sometimes twice or three times before morning. And every time I would bark my loudest and the man would strike a light and wallop me. The thing was baffling. I couldn’t possibly have mistaken what mother had said to me. She said it too often for that. Bark! Bark! Bark! It was the main plank of her whole system of education. And yet, here I was, getting walloped every night for doing it.
    I thought it out till my head ached, and finally I got it right. I began to see that mother’s outlook was narrow. No doubt, living with a man like master at the public house, a man without a trace of shyness in his composition, barking was all right. But circumstances alter cases. I belonged to a man who was a mass of nerves, who got the jumps if you spoke to him. What I had to do was to forget the training I had had from mother, sound as it no doubt was as a general thing, and to adapt myself to the needs of the particular man who had happened to buy me. I had tried mother’s way, and all it had brought me was walloping, so now I would think for myself.
    So next night, when I heard the window go, I lay there without a word, though it went against all my better feelings. I didn’t even growl. Someone came in and moved about in the dark, with a lantern, but, though I smelt that it was the man, I didn’t ask him a single question. And presently the man lit a light and came over to me and gave me a pat, which was a thing he had never done before.
    â€˜Good dog!’ he said. ‘Now you can have this.’
    And he let me lick out the saucepan in which the dinner had been cooked.
    After that, we got on fine. Whenever I heard anyone at the window I just kept curled up and took no notice, and every time I got a bone or something good. It was easy, once you had got the hang of things.’
    It was about a week after that the man took me out one morning, and we walked a long way till we turned in at some big gates and went along a very smooth road till we came to a great house, standing all by itself in the middle of a whole lot of country. There was a big lawn in front of it, and all round there were fields and trees, and at the back a great wood.
    The man rang a bell, and the door opened, and an old man came out.
    â€˜Well?’ he said, not very cordially.
    â€˜I thought you might want to buy a good watchdog,’ said the man.
    â€˜Well, that’s queer, your saying that,’ said the caretaker. ‘It’s a coincidence. That’s exactly what I do want to buy. I was just thinking of going along and trying to get one. My old dog picked up something this morning that he oughtn’t to have, and he’s dead, poor feller.’
    â€˜Poor feller,’ said the man. ‘Found an old bone with phosphorus on it, I guess.’
    â€˜What do you want for this one?’
    â€˜Five shillings.’
    â€˜Is he a good watchdog?’
    â€˜He’s a grand watchdog.’
    â€˜He looks fierce