A Lord’s dependent watched kitchen help give scraps to a Beggar and his Dog. The Beggar divided the leavings much like the Lord divided his castoffs.
We are not all that different.
JBR Collection
A Beggar and his Dog sat at the gate of a noble courtier, and were preparing to make a meal on a bowl of fragments that had been brought out by the kitchenmaid. A poor dependant of his Lordship’s, who had been sharing the singular favour of a dinner at the steward’s table, was struck with the appearance, and stopped a little to observe them. The Beggar, hungry and voracious as any courtier in Christendom, seized with greediness the choicest morsels, and swallowed them himself; the residue was divided into portions for his children. A scrag was thrust into one pocket for honest Jack, a crust into another for bashful Tom, and a luncheon of cheese was wrapped up with care for the little favourite of his hopeful family. In short, if anything was thrown to the Dog, it was a bone so closely picked that it scarce afforded a pittance to keep life and soul together. “How exactly alike,” said the dependant, “is this poor Dog’s case and mine! He is watching for a dinner from a master who can not spare it; I for a place from a needy Lord whose wants, perhaps, are greater than my own, and whose relations are more clamorous than any of this Beggar’s brats.”
