The Lady and The Dog

My aunt possesses the most mighty ancestry and the most pristine lineage. She has a peculiarly crushing arrogance . She looks down her long nose through frosty eyes, as if most beings are quite beneath her dignity. On her forehead she wears a frown that has been known to cause the most loquacious visitors to fall uneasily silent when she turns the light of her countenance disdainfully upon them.
Oh, she is very, very beautiful with a complexion like old ivory. Even her wrinkled skin is pale and delicate. Her eyes are dark pools of emerald green water...... which can quickly turn into fire. Her hair is dark, still dark, at age 84. It is held back on to her noble cranium with a small french knot at the nape of her slender swan-like neck. She holds herself erect, and will stay erect as far as the proud curves of her tall elegance allows.

BUT, her dog is everything she is not. To begin with, it is part terrier, part Labrador, with a fair bit of sheepdog ancestry, a flavour of a collie (in it's tail), a suggestion of a hound. The Vet refrained from giving his expert opinion. The problem, he said, was beyond him. The dog had come as a puppy some three years back, on a rainswept evening. Something had yielded within the tough Trojan heart of my aunt. The dog was given shelter, and thus he is now there. The Tramp with it's completely unknown background is whitish gray with black patches. A huge brute of a dog with a huge tail. A most wxpressive tail, if one may comment. The Tramp's tail is tremblingly responsive to his every mood and his moods are many. The mistress is so proud that she never permits herself ever to feel a weakness, let alone show it. The dog, un-upheld by the arrogance of race and beauty, feels many weaknesses and shows them all. He is frightened, he is unhappy, he is anxious, he is overwhelmingly joyful. He is penitent, he is shy, he is coy, he is passionately loving. His tail like a dirty curled ostrich feather trembles, droops, waves, rotates, rises, falls or simply disappears altogether between his hind legs, according to those emotions that is ravaging his faithful breast. For faithful the Tramp undoubtedly is. Inspite of the extreme nervousness of his highly strung temperance he would have died in defense of his dearly loved mistress, who he considers to be his sacred property. The Tramp's loving faithfulness is very visible in his bright button eyes that peeps out of the whitish thatch. The loyalty also shows its fine fettle dripping in streams of saliva from the end of his long pink tongue that he lowers out of the side of his mouth in moments of emotion. He always dribbles when he loves people and he loves all people. The Tramp with flapping uncontrollable ears, sprawling uncoordinated legs is loved by all and loves all.

How these two diametrically opposite creatures co-habit in the sprawling bungalow is a mystery!