e with the
gaze of ingenuous innocence.

"You wouldn't have wanted the poor little dog to have died in the snow,
would you, Nurse?... It might, you know. It won't be any trouble, I
expect--"

There was no reply. He could hear Mary and Helen drawing in their
breaths with excited attention.

"Father always said we might have a dog one day when we were older--and
we are older now."

Still no word.

"We'll be extra good, Nurse, if you don't mind. Don't you remember once
you said you had a dog when you were a little girl, and how you cried
when it had its ear bitten off by a nasty big dog, and how your mother
said she wouldn't have it fighting round the house, and sent it away,
and you cried, and cried, and cried, and how you said that p'r'aps we'll
have one one day?--and now we've got one."

He ended triumphantly. She raised her eyes for one moment, stared at
them all, bit off a piece of thread, and said in deep, sepulchral tones:

"Either it goes, or I go."

The three stared at one another. The Jampot go? Really go?... They could
hear their hearts thumping one after another. The Jampot go?

"Oh, Nurse, would you really?" whispered Mary. This innocent remark of
Mary's conveyed in the tone of it more pleased anticipation than was,
perhaps, polite. Certainly the Jampot felt this; a flood of colour
rose into her face. Her mouth opened. But what she would have said is
uncertain, for at that very moment the drama was further developed
by the slow movement of the door, and the revelation of half of Uncle
Samuel's body, clothed in its stained blue painting smock, and his ugly
fat face clothed in its usual sarcastic smile.

"Excuse me one moment," he said; "I hear you have a dog."

The Jampot rose, as good manners demanded, but said nothing.

"Where is the creature?" he asked.

The new addition to the Cole family had finished his washing; the
blazing fire had almost dried him, and his hair stuck out now from his
body in little stiff prickles, hedgehog fashion, giving him a truly
original appearance. His beard afforded him the air of an ambassador,
and his grave, melancholy eyes the absorbed introspection of a Spanish
hidalgo; his tail, however, in its upright, stumpy jocularity, betrayed
his dignity.

"There he is," said Jeremy, with a glance half of terror, half of
delight, at the Jampot. "Isn't he lovely?"

"Lovely. My word!" Uncle Samuel's smile broadened. "He's about the most
hideous mongrel it's ever been m