y. A night or two after the death of Punch, his
master chanced to be dining with the Coverleys, in Brooklyn. Mr.
Coverley, noticing the trappings and the suits of woe which his friend
wore in his face, naturally asked the cause. He had in his stable a
Dandie as fine as Punch, whom he had not seen, or thought of, for a
month. Would the bereaved one like to see him? The mourner would like to
look at any dog who looked like the companion who had been taken from
him; and a call, through a speaking-tube, brought into the room, head
over heels, with all the wild impetuosity of his race, Punch
personified, his ghost embodied, his twin brother. The same long, lithe
body, the same short legs (the fore legs shaped like a capital S), the
same short tail, the same hair dragging the ground, the same beautiful
head, the same wistful, expressive eye, the same cool, insinuating nose.
The new-comer raced around the table, passing his owner unnoticed, and
not a word was spoken. Then this Dandie cut a sort of double
pigeon-wing, gave a short bark, put his crooked, dirty little feet on
the stranger's knees, insinuated his cool and expressive nose into an
unresisting hand, and wagged his stump of a tail with all his loving
might. It was the longed-for touch of a vanished paw, the lick of a
tongue that was still. He was unkempt, uncombed, uncared for, but he was
another Punch, and he knew a friend when he saw one. "If that were my
dog he would not live forgotten in a stable: he would take the place in
the society to which his birth and his evident breeding entitle him,"
was the friend's remark, and Mop regretfully went back to his stall.

[Illustration: MOP AND HIS MASTER]

The next morning, early, he came into the Thirty-fourth Street study,
combed, kempt, shining, cared for to a superlative degree; with a note
in his mouth signifying that his name was Mop and that he was The Boy's.
He was The Boy's, and The Boy was his, so long as he lived, ten happy
years for both of them.

Without Punch's phenomenal intelligence, Mop had many of Punch's ways,
and all of Punch's trust and affection; and, like Punch, he was never so
superlatively happy as when he was roughly mauled and pulled about by
his tail. When by chance he was shut out in the back-yard, he knocked,
with his tail, on the door; he squirmed his way into the heart of Mary
Cook in the first ten minutes, and in half an hour he was on terms of
the most affectionate friendship with Punch