one afternoon when a note was
brought in asking me to step round and have a cup of tea. Martell was
monosyllabic as usual, and we sat and gazed into the fire.

"I don't suppose you would like to part with Peter," he said suddenly.

"I certainly should not," I answered.

Then, after a pause, "Could you tell a good lie?" he asked.

I looked up in astonishment, but just then Mrs. Martell entered and
plunged _in medias res_. She had just returned from the last of those
fruitless expeditions, and the slow realization that there can be only
one Peter in the world had brought her nearly to tears.

"And I've bought such a sweet little collar for him," she said, "with
'Peter' printed in big letters."

I remembered then that the original dog was in daily danger of being
arrested, his very aged collar having been chewed to pulp after his last
castigation therewith.

"And a dear little pair of soft slippers, one for him to play with, and
the other to smack him with if he's ever naughty, although I don't think
he could be--your Peter, I mean. Have you slippers for him?"

"Well, not a pair," I said, "and not exactly slippers. One's a
golf-ball, the other's more in the nature of a boot."

"Oh, but he 's such a sweet-tempered little creature, isn't he?"

I felt Martell's eye upon, me.

"Very," I said; "his early upbringing gave him a healthy body and a
mellow heart. He was born in a brewery, you know, and never tasted water
until I flung him into the canal the first day I had him. Since then, as
often as he has time, he goes to bathe in the scummiest parts, and then
comes and tells me all about it with any amount of circumstantial
evidence. Most enthusiastic little swimmer he is."

"What a funny dog! But I should never allow him to go out alone--if he
were mine, I mean. And what sort of food do you give him?"

"Well, he tried to swallow one of my white ties last night."

"Oh, but I should give him proper food," she said. "He doesn't hate
cats, does he? I couldn't bear a dog that did."

My eyes met Martell's for one moment, then I cleared my throat. Slowly
and sadly I opened the history of Peter militant, with unacknowledged
borrowings from the lives of other Peters with other names. Beginning
with cats I had seen in my garden looking as if they felt rather blurred
and indistinct, I passed on through cats speechless and perforated, to
cats that were. I told sad stories of the deaths of cats. I talked of
nights of agoni