Celia, on being told about the engagement of Mrs Barker, remarked, ‘Mother had her in to clean the kitchen when we left the cottage but we had to give her up. She made things dirtier after she’d finished than they were before.’ And she added thoughtfully, ‘I’m rather sorry you’ve got her.’

The dog Taffy was another pensioner of the cottage, and so was the dog they called Jimmy Barrell, because of his superb chest. Jimmy Barrell belonged to the ill-tempered looking gentleman who lived a few doors from the cottage. He was a hearty, athletic, contemptuous sort of dog, who used to come into the cottage as one who bustles in during a morning of necessary civic activities to visit admiring but shiftless friends.

He, like Taffy, would sit still for a few moments, having his chest admired, looking rather scornfully round the cottage (‘he’s comparing it with his own home,’ said Harry) and then bundling off, full of importance.

Taffy’s visits were made in a different, though an equally contemptuous spirit. His sneezings and abrupt paw-shakings, his lean, nervous lines and beautiful golden coat suggested that his was a neurotic, moody and poetic temperament. Jimmy Barrell consented to recognize the three when he met any of them in the street, but Taffy, absorbed in sniffings, inspections or in mere aimless trottings, would always cut them all dead. If Celia was with them he would caress her and sneeze over her in a pointed way, but if Sophia patted him he would stare indifferently away over the Heath, as though absorbed by the view; this annoyed Sophia, who thought him a fascinating but ungrateful dog.

Then there was Dan. He was a large woolly Airedale who lived somewhere in the Vale and went out for walks with a master who had no control over his actions at all. He would occasionally walk into the cottage, with a patronizing rather than a contemptuous air (only one of the dogs in the Vale ever showed any signs of gratitude or pleasure at being allowed in the cottage) and allow them to pat and feed him, but he was too dignified to do this often, and they usually heard or saw him only at night when he was taken out on his final run. His master liked to stop and gossip with acquaintances who were out on the same errand, and his roars of ‘Dan! Come here, sir. Come here, you brute, or I’ll flay you! Will you come here, confound you! Dan! leave that alone, sir! Drop it at once!’ could be heard every night about ten o’clock, echoing all over the Vale.

Dan took no notice at all. Like a large, calm woolly dreadnought he voyaged and sniffed wherever he chose, interrupting his master’s little chats by disappearing alarmingly for moments at a time, silently rushing after stray cats, walking stiffly and offensively at other and smaller dogs, and lingering over a smell while his master stood holding open the gate for him and bellowing. The children anticipated that one night he would pause, choke, and have a stroke, and it would all be Dan’s fault.