MY.EARLY FRIENDS. I33
the catastrophe, which had extinguished the spark of life in
one of God's happy creatures, and occasioned such affliction
to the children.
 I remember what a blight came over the bright day; how
I rose from my dinner in a passion of sorrow, because in a
moment of forgetfulness I had begun to lay aside some scrap
for the dog which had ceased to need scraps; and how I
walked in the garden among the Maundy roses and tall white
Canterbury bells, and gathered-to store for a melancholy
memorial-some early seeds of the nasturtium with which
the little animal had been fond of playing, and in which there
remained the marks of his tiny teeth. I have had greater
losses since then, but I have not forgotten that first shock
and stab of irretrievable separation.
 To console us children for being deprived of our pet-and,
I daresay, as some small atonement in her own person-my
mother furnished us with money to buy another dog; an act
in which there was a departure from the family practice of not
spending what little money was to spare unnecessarily, and,
above all, of not accustoming the children to anything that
could be regarded as extravagance or self-indulgence. In our
whole connection with dogs, this was the only instance in
which one became ours by purchase.
 I cannot recall that it grated on my feelings that the empty
place of my dead pet should be filled up. I daresay I made
some protest at first-that I would not be consoled, and that I
could never like (we say like in Scotland, where an English
child would say love) another doggie as I had liked Fido.
But I was not then sufficiently faithful-or shall I say proud
and passionate enough ?-to be long able to resist the prospect