porridge with them for us.

We never got meat three times a day. Miss Laura said it was all very
well to feed hunting dogs on meat, but dogs that are kept about a house
get ill if they are fed too well. So we had meat only once a day, and
bread and milk, porridge, or dog biscuits, for our other meals.

I made a dreadful noise when I was eating. Ever since Jenkins cut my
ears off, I had had trouble in breathing. The flaps had kept the wind
and dust from the inside of my ears. Now that they were gone my head was
stuffed up all the time. The cold weather made me worse, and sometimes I
had such trouble to get my breath that it seemed as if I would choke.
If I had opened my mouth, and breathed through it, as I have seen some
people doing, I would have been more comfortable, but dogs always like
to breathe through their noses.

"You have taken more cold," said Miss Laura, this night, as she put my
plate of food on the floor for me. "Finish your meat, and then come and
sit by the fire with me. What! do you want more?"

I gave a little bark, so she filled my plate for the second time. Miss
Laura never allowed any one to meddle with us when we were eating.
One day she found Willie teasing me by snatching at a bone that I was
gnawing. "Willie," she said, "what would you do if you were just sitting
down to the table feeling very hungry, and just as you began to eat your
meat and potatoes, I would come along and snatch the plate from you?"

"I don't know what I'd do," he said, laughingly; "but I'd want to wallop
you."

"Well," she said, "I'm afraid that Joe will 'wallop' you some day if you
worry him about his food, for even a gentle dog will sometimes snap at
any one who disturbs him at his meals; so you had better not try his
patience too far."

Willie never teased me after that, and I was very glad, for two or three
times I had been tempted to snarl at him.

After I finished my tea, I followed Miss Laura upstairs. She took up
a book and sat down in a low chair, and I lay down on the hearth rug
beside her.

"Do you know, Joe," she said with a smile, "why you scratch with your
paws when you lie down, as if to make yourself a hollow bed, and turn
around a great many times before you lie down?"

Of course I did not know, so I only stared at her. "Years and years
ago," she went on, gazing down at me, "there weren't any dogs living in
people's houses, as you are, Joe. They were all wild creatures running
about the woods.