I have seen a good deal of trouble in my life, but never one yet that did not have an Italian image-vendor somehow or other mixed up in it. Where these boys hide in times of peace is a mystery. The chance of being upset brings them out as sunshine brings out flies. The motor cycle had dashed into a little milk-cart and had spread it out neatly in the middle of the tram lines. The tram traffic looked like being stopped for a quarter of an hour; but the idea of every approaching tram driver appeared to be that if he rang his bell with sufficient vigor this seeming obstruction would fade away and disappear.
In an English town all this would not have attracted much attention. Somebody would have explained that a dog was the original cause, and the whole series of events would have appeared ordinary and natural. Upon these foreigners the fear descended that the Almighty, for some reason, was angry with them. A policeman ran to catch the dog.
The delighted dog rushed backwards, barking furiously, and tried to throw up paving stones with its hind legs. That frightened a nursemaid who was wheeling a perambulator, and then it was that I entered into the proceedings. Seated on the edge of the pavement, with a perambulator on one side of me and a howling baby on the other, I told that dog what I thought of him.
Forgetful that I was in a foreign land—that he might not understand me—I told it him in English, I told it him at length, I told it very loud and clear. He stood a yard in front of me, listening to me with an expression of ecstatic joy I have never before or since seen equalled on any face, human or canine. He drank it in as though it had been music from Paradise.
“Where have I heard that song before?” he seemed to be saying to himself, “the old familiar language they used to talk to me when I was young?”
He approached nearer to me; there were almost tears in his eyes when I had finished.
“Say it again!” he seemed to be asking of me. “Oh! say it all over again, the dear old English oaths and curses that in this God-forsaken land I never hoped to hear again.”
I learnt from the young lady that he was an English-born fox-terrier. That explained everything. The foreign dog does not do this sort of thing. The foreigner is born good: that is why we hate him.