“You’ll never guess,” he said.  “Look!” and he dropped at my feet a chick just out of the egg.

I smacked his head and took him into the cottage to explain.

“My dog,” I said, “has eaten one of your chickens.”

Chum nudged me in the ankle and grinned.

“Two of your chickens,” I corrected myself, looking at the fresh evidence which he had just brought to light.

“You don’t want me any more?” said Chum, as the financial arrangements proceeded.  “Then I’ll just go and find somewhere for these two.”  And he picked them up and trotted into the sun.

When I came out I was greeted effusively.

“This is a wonderful day,” he panted, as he wriggled his body.  “I didn’t know the country was like this.  What do we do now?”

“We go home,” I said, and we went.

That was Chum’s last day of freedom.  He keeps inside the front gate now.  But he is still a happy dog; there is plenty doing in the garden.  There are beds to walk over, there are blackbirds in the apple tree to bark at.  The world is still full of wonderful things.  “Why, only last Wednesday,” he will tell you, “the fishmonger left his basket in the drive.  There was a haddock in it, if you’ll believe me, for master’s breakfast, so of course I saved it for him.  I put it on the grass just in front of his study window, where he’d be sure to notice it.  Bless you, there’s always something to do in this house.  One is never idle.”

And even when there is nothing doing, he is still happy; waiting cheerfully upon events until they arrange themselves for his amusement.  He will sit for twenty minutes opposite the garden bank, watching for a bumble-bee to come out of its hole.  “I saw him go in,” he says to himself, “so he’s bound to come out.  Extraordinarily interesting world.”  But to his inferiors (such as the gardener) he pretends that it is not pleasure but duty which keeps him.  “Don’t talk to me, fool.  Can’t you see that I’ve got a job on here?”

Chum has found, however, that his particular mission in life is to purge his master’s garden of all birds.  This keeps him busy.  As soon as he sees a blackbird on the lawn he is in full cry after it.  When he gets to the place and finds the blackbird gone, he pretends that he was going there anyhow; he gallops round in circles, rolls over once or twice, and then trots back again.  “You didn’t really think I was such a fool as to try to catch a blackbird?” he says to us.  “No, I was just taking a little run—­splendid thing for the figure.”

And it is just Chum’s little runs over the beds which call aloud for firmness—­which, in fact, have inspired my birthday present to him.  But there is this difficulty to overcome first.  When he came to live with us an arrangement was entered into (so he says) by which one bed was given to him as his own.  In that bed he could wander at will, burying bones and biscuits, hunting birds.  This may have been so, but it is a pity that nobody but Chum knows definitely which is the bed.