" There is something humorous in the alteration, as if
Marjorie refused to be put off with an "excellent family substitute" for
fire and brimstone, and demanded the "unquestionable" article, no other
being genuine, please observe trade mark.
Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous study of dogs, "Rab," of
course, holds the same place as Marjorie among his sketches of children.
But if his "Queen Mary's Child Garden," the description of the little
garden in which Mary Stuart did _not_ play when a child, is second to
"Marjorie," so "Our Dogs" is a good second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown
never wrote anything more mirthful than his description of the sudden
birth of the virtue of courage in Toby, a comic but cowardly mongrel, a
cur of low degree.
"Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens
before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors
off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced man--_torvo vultu_--was, by law of
contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby
into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his
eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone,
and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been
planting some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick
Toby made very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged
covering it, or thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling
nose, when S.
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