now a way to stop them," so, quiet as a mouse, she stole out
of bed, slipped into her bed-slippers and her nurse's wrapper, that was
lying across a chair, and then just as noiselessly stole downstairs, and
unlocking the door leading to the back porch, hurried to open the gate
of the kennel, for simply to let the puppies run she knew would stop
their barking. Tattine was right about that, but just as she swung the
gate open, a happy thought struck those four little puppies' minds, and
as she started to run back to the house, all four of them buried their
sharp little teeth in the frill of Priscilla's wrapper.

Still Tattine succeeded in making her way across the lawn back to the
door, although she had four puppies in tow and was almost weak from
laughing.

She knew perfectly well what a funny picture she must make, with the
wrapper that was so much too large for her, only kept in place by the
big puff sleeves: and with the puppies pulling away for dear life, it
the train. When she reached the screen door, she had a tussle with them,
one by one, taking a sort of reef in the trailing skirt as each puppy
was successfully disposed of, until all of it was clear of the sharp
little teeth, and she could bang the door to between them.

I do not believe Grandma Luty ever laughed harder than when Tattine told
her all about it as they sat together in the porch that morning after
breakfast. She even laughed her cap way over on one side, so that
Tattine had to take out the gold pins and put them in again to
straighten it.

"But Grandma," said Tattine, when they had sobered down, "those puppies,
cunning as they are now, will just be cruel setters when they grow up,
killing everything they come across, birds and rabbits and chipmunks."

"Tattine," said Grandma Luty, with her dear, kindly smile "your Mother
has told me how disappointed you have been this summer in Betsy and
Doctor and little Black-and-white, and that now Barney has fallen into
disgrace, since he kept you so long in the ford the other day, but I
want to tell you something. You must not stop loving them at all because
they do what you call cruel things. You have heard the old rhyme:--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God has made them so:
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 'tis their nature to."

"Oh, yes, I know that," said Tattine, "and I don't think it's all quite
true; our dogs don't bite (I suppose it means biting people), bad as
th