And another factor than the church and its mother-angel helped Jinny over this dreary time. This was her dog. For only now did Nip emerge into his full caninity, or at least only now did Jinny learn to appreciate him to the full. In howsoever leaden a mood she started her carrying work, Nip’s ecstasy soon tinged it with gold. His blissful staccato barks, his tall inflated tail, his upleapings at her as she harnessed Methusalem, his gallopings and gambollings round that stolider fellow-quadruped, his crazy friskings and curvetings—who could resist such joy of life? Often it seemed to Jinny that he was returning thanks to his Maker for the sunshine or the good smells, rebuking unconsciously her heart-heaviness, bidding her cry no more over spilt milk, but just lap up what she could. “Cheer up, Jinny!” she heard him bark. “Men are brutes and women fools and gran’fers grumpy and customers cruel, but life is jolly and odours numerous and where there’s a way there’s a Will.” And infected by these sentiments of his, she would crack her whip, and Methusalem would prick up his ears and pretend for her sake to go faster, and there would be a lull in the ache at her heart. Nip, however, was less consoling when the rival carriers met on the road. Then his invincible persuasion that the two were one brought Jinny considerable discomfort. For Will persisted in his later tactics of slowing down, whether to take stock of her appearance or to rub in the odious comparison of their respective equipages, so that while these were in proximity, Nip was able to feel himself shepherding them, and he ran from one to the other, rounding them up. Even when Jinny manœuvred off down the first by-way, Nip, not to be baulked, would travel between one and the other, growing more and more desperate as they grew more and more distant, till at last, fearful of losing both, he exchanged his frenzied shuttling between them for a still more frenzied standstill midway between the mutually receding vehicles—you saw him almost literally torn in two. Finally, after plaintive ululations of protest, he would trot back, with hang-dog look and drooping tail, to the shabby cart, where his mistress throned, grim and pale, amid her manifold mock parcels. III But it was neither Mr. Fallows sermons nor Nip’s that gave Jinny her first real sense of religion; not even the bass-viol and flute, though she heard them with ecstasy, nor the collects and litanies, though she perused them with interest. It came to her one pitch-black night when she had too confidently ventured out to bring first aid—a jug of real tea with some bread and butter—to poor rheumatic Uncle Lilliwhyte, whom earlier that day, while gathering mushrooms for supper, she had discovered in a deserted charcoal-burner’s hut.