Often one is cold and hungry, out
there.
One has to fend for oneself, out there; earn one's dinner before one
eats it, never quite sure of the week after next. Terrible things
take place, out there: strain and contest and fierce endeavour; the
ways are full of dangers and surprises; folk go up, folk go down; you
have to set your teeth and fight. Well-to-do little men and women
shudder. Draw down the nursery blinds.
Robina had a little dog. It led the usual dog's life: slept in a
basket on an eiderdown cushion, sheltered from any chance draught by
silk curtains; its milk warmed and sweetened; its cosy chair reserved
for it, in winter, near the fire; in summer, where the sun might
reach it; its three meals a day that a gourmet might have eaten
gladly; its very fleas taken off its hands.
And twice a year still extra care was needed, lest it should wantonly
fling aside its days and nights of luxurious ease, claim its small
share of the passion and pain that go to the making of dogs and men.
For twice a year there came a wind, salt with the brine of earth's
ceaseless tides, whispering to it of a wondrous land whose sharpest
stones are sweeter than the silken cushions of all the world without.
One winter's night there was great commotion. Babette was nowhere to
be found. We were living in the country, miles away from everywhere.
"Babette, Babette," cried poor frenzied Robina; and for answer came
only the laughter of the wind, pausing in his game of romps with the
snow-flakes.
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