"What kind of dog is he?" I inquired swiftly.
Eileen said no more. There are problems that even girls of twenty cannot solve.
A warm bath had revealed to us the fact that the puppy was of a dingy yellow hue. I suggested that we should call him Mustard. Our son John, on being consulted--against my advice--by his mother, addressed the animal as Pussy. Stella continued to favor Tiny. Finally Eileen, who was at the romantic age, produced a copy of Tennyson and suggested Excalibur, alleging in support of her preposterous proposition that
"The darling rose from out the bosom of the lake, too, just like the sword Excalibur," she said; "so I think it would make a lovely name for him."
"The little brute waded out of a muddy pond towing a brick," I replied. "I see no parallel. He was not the product of the pond. Some one must have thrown him in, and he came out."
"That is just what some one must have done with the sword," retorted Eileen. "So we'll call you Excalibur, won't we, darling little Scally?"
She embraced the puppy warmly and the unsuspecting animal replied by frantically licking her face.
However, the name stuck, with variations. When the puppy was big enough he was presented with a collar, engraved with the name Excalibur, together with my name and address. Among ourselves we usually addressed him as Scally. The children in the village called him the Scalawag.
His time during his first year in our household was fully occupied in growing up. Stella declared that if one could have persuaded him to stand still for five minutes it would have been actually possible to see him grow. He grew at the rate of about an inch a week for the best part of a year. When he had finished he looked like nothing on earth. At one time we cherished a brief but illusory hope that he was going to turn into some sort of an imitation of a St. Bernard; but the symptoms rapidly passed off, and his final and permanent aspect was that of a rather badly stuffed lion.
Like most overgrown creatures he was top-heavy and lethargic and very humble-minded. Still, there was a kind of respectful pertinacity about him. It requires some strength of character, for instance, to wade along the bottom of a pond to dry land, accompanied by a brick as big as yourself. It was quite impossible, too, short of locking him up, to prevent him from accompanying us when we took our walks abroad, if he had made up his mind to do so.