My rollicking laughter was a work of art. "Of course, that was it," I agreed, "and he'd been away from us so long that he was over-eager. Come on, let's see if we can't make the poor beast comfortable."
The poor beast was lying panting on my still unmade bed. The flowered Chinese silk pyjamas which I had worn at breakfast were indeed strangely twisted around its gaunt body. The coat was across the animal's shoulders and both of its hind-legs were sticking through one of the trouser-legs.
"There! Ponto! Poor old fellow!" cooed Jimmie in a voice which would have charmed snails from their shells.
Ponto gave a self-pitying whine and his tail thumped the pillow like an overseer's whip across the back of Uncle Tom. My wife patted the animal's head and Ponto positively drooled at her. She gently disentangled him from among the pyjamas and hung them up in the closet. As she turned toward the bed, he jumped to the floor, reared up, put both paws on her shoulders and licked her face convulsively, giving little whines and shiverings.
"Poor old fellow, poor old Ponto!" she crooned. "Was he glad to get home from the nasty old kennel? There!" And she massaged his ears. "Come on now, Ponto," she remarked more authoritatively, "say good morning to your master."
The answer was a grand diapason of a growl and the baring of a thicket of gleaming white fangs in my direction.
"Ponto!" she ordered, as the beast positively cringed. "Say good morning to the master!"
He slumped to the floor with the grace of a pole-axed calf and approached me slowly, ears back, hair bristling and teeth in evidence.
"Ponto!" Germaine's cry was positively totalitarian but the dog lunged at me and I barely had time to close the door in its face.
A few minutes later, Germaine emerged looking bewildered. "I've never known him to behave like this," she said. "I don't like it. It's always been you he was so fond of and he barely tolerated me. Now he seems all mixed-up. After you left, he calmed right down and came back and licked my face all over again. What do you suppose is wrong with him. Can it be fits?"
I shook my head. "He doesn't act like fits," I said. "He's had a bad go of distemper and is probably suffering from shock. Dogs do get shock, you know. I remember in Psychology at Harvard they told us about a very intelligent St. Bernard dog which was shocked into complete hysteria by the supernatural. That is, they pulled a lamb chop across the floor by a thread concealed in a crack between the boards. The dog nearly had heart failure when he saw a chop moving by itself."