I think it was for Rona that we children first manufactured a set of garments which figured on more than one dog. There was a pair of flannel pantaloons, into which we inserted the dog’s unwilling legs, fastening the pantaloons by strings across her back. There was a flannel gown, which we called a dressing-gown, and suspended round her shoulders. The costume was finished by a round cap, like a Highland bonnet, which we put on her head, tying it under her chin—or jaw: on high occasions we stuck a feather unto this cap. Of course Rona objected strongly, in her own mind, to these incongruous decorations, though she had to submit outwardly to our will on that point. The pantaloons, after they had been donned, were least in her way, and she would appear to forget them and run about in them without protest for hours. I remember one day, during a period of rainy weather, when even the sandy roads of that district were wet and miry, that an elder sister, who had gone to make calls in the village, came back half-a-mile with Rona. The dog had stolen out and kept at a safe distance in the rear, till she considered that she was beyond the danger of being marched home, when she capered to the front, and her unconscious companion not only perceived who was her attendant, but discovered, to her mingled diversion and chagrin, that the dog was dressed in that supremely absurd pair of pantaloons, plentifully bespattered with mud. By the time the younger members of the family were sent to school, poor Rona was up in years, and had become peevish and snappish in her growing infirmities, so that it was judged advisable that she should be quietly put out of the way in her mistresses’ absence. When we came home jubilant, we found no Rona waddling out to greet us, and I am afraid we had so many to meet, and so much to occupy us, that we hardly missed our humble friend. A contemporary of Rona’s was a tall, gaunt, black—with silver hairs, peculiarly ugly, and valuable sheep-dog, which was my father’s friend. His ugliness was the result either of disease or of an accident, which had removed a portion of the lip and exposed his teeth on one side, but which did not impair his health, or detract from his merit as a wise and an efficient collie. His name, which was not given by us, was peculiar. I imagine it was either a mistake or a corruption. Instead of being termed “Yarrow,” “Tweed,” or “Heather,” the traditional names for Scotch collies, he was called “Gasto,” which I have a notion must have been a perversion of “Gaston,” though how a Scotch collie came to bear a chivalrous French Christian name I have not the faintest idea.