"We don't really want a dog with a pedigree. We only want something that
will bark at beggars and be gentle with baby. Why not go to the Home for
Lost Dogs at Battersea? I believe you can get any dog you like there for
five shillings. We will run up to town next Wednesday and see about
it--and I might get some clothes as well."

Hence our presence on the tram.

Presently the conductor, who had kindly pointed out to us such objects
of local interest as the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament,
stopped the tram in a crowded thoroughfare and announced that we were in
Battersea.

"Alight here," he announced facetiously, "for 'Ome for Lost Dawgs!"

Guiltily realizing that there is many a true word spoken in jest, we
obeyed him, and the tram went rocking and whizzing out of sight. We had
eschewed a cab.

"When you are only going to pay five shillings for a dog," my wife had
pointed out, with convincing logic, "it is silly to go and pay perhaps
another five shillings for a cab. It doubles the price of the dog at
once. If we had been buying an expensive dog we might have taken a cab;
but not for a five-shilling one."

"Now," I inquired briskly, "how are we going to find this place?"

"Haven't you any idea where it is?"

"No. I have a sort of vague notion that it is on an island in the middle
of the river, called the Isle of Dogs, or Barking Reach, or something
like that. However, I have no doubt--"

"Hadn't we better ask some one?" suggested Stella.

I demurred.

"If there is one thing I dislike," I said, "it is accosting total
strangers and badgering them for information they don't possess--not
that that will prevent them from giving it. If we start asking the way
we shall find ourselves in Putney or Woolwich in no time!"

"Yes, dear," said Stella soothingly.

"Now I suggest--" My hand went to my pocket.

"No, darling," interposed my wife, hastily; "not a map, please!" It is a
curious psychological fact that women have a constitutional aversion to
maps and railroad time-tables. They would rather consult a half-witted
errand boy or a deaf railroad porter. "Do not let us make a spectacle of
ourselves in the public streets again! I have not yet forgotten the day
when you tried to find the Crystal Palace. Besides, it will only blow
away. Ask that dear little boy there. He is looking at us so wistfully."

Yes; I admit it was criminal folly. A man who asks a London street boy
to be so kind as to direct him to