We finished up with tea and cherry tart. Montmorency had a fight with
the kettle during tea-time, and came off a poor second.
Throughout the trip, he had manifested great curiosity concerning the
kettle. He would sit and watch it, as it boiled, with a puzzled
expression, and would try and rouse it every now and then by growling at
it. When it began to splutter and steam, he regarded it as a challenge,
and would want to fight it, only, at that precise moment, some one would
always dash up and bear off his prey before he could get at it.
To-day he determined he would be beforehand. At the first sound the
kettle made, he rose, growling, and advanced towards it in a threatening
attitude. It was only a little kettle, but it was full of pluck, and it
up and spit at him.
"Ah! would ye!" growled Montmorency, showing his teeth; "I'll teach ye to
cheek a hard-working, respectable dog; ye miserable, long-nosed, dirty-
looking scoundrel, ye. Come on!"
And he rushed at that poor little kettle, and seized it by the spout.
Then, across the evening stillness, broke a blood-curdling yelp, and
Montmorency left the boat, and did a constitutional three times round the
island at the rate of thirty-five miles an hour, stopping every now and
then to bury his nose in a bit of cool mud.
