I said, "it might have made a good
dog of you."

"I'm good enough now," said Dandy, airily. "The young ladies who drove
with my master used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too
good. To go on with my story: I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I
got sick of her fussy ways She made a simpleton of herself over those
poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they
always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all
called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff.
One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit
Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away
from the house."

"Speaking about fools, Dandy," I said, "if it is polite to call a lady
one, I should say that that lady was one. Dogs shouldn't be put out of
their place. Why didn't she have some poor children at her table, and in
her carriage, and let the dogs run behind?"

"Easy to see you don't know New York," said Dandy, with a laugh. "Poor
children don't live with rich, old ladies. Mrs. Tibbett hated children,
anyway. Then dogs like poodles would get lost in the mud, or killed in
the crowd if they ran behind a carriage. Only knowing dogs like me can
make their way about." I rather doubted this speech; but I said nothing,
and he went on patronizingly: "However, Joe, thou hast reason, as the
French say. Mrs. Judge Tibbett didn't give her dogs exercise enough.
Their claws were as long as Chinamen's nails, and the hair grew over
their pads, and they had red eyes and were always sick, and she had to
dose them with medicine, and call them her poor, little, 'weeny-teeny
sicky-wicky doggies.' Bah! I got disgusted with her. When I left her, I
ran away to her niece's, Miss Ball's. She was a sensible young lady, and
she used to scold her aunt for the way in which she brought up her dogs.
She was almost too sensible, for her pug and I were rubbed and scrubbed
within an inch of our lives, and had to go for such long walks that I
got thoroughly sick of them. A woman, whom the servants called Trotsey,
came every morning, and took the pug and me by our chains, and sometimes
another dog or two, and took us for long tramps in quiet streets. That
was Trotsey's business, to walk dogs, and Miss Ball got a great many
fashionable young ladies who could not exercise their dogs, to let
Trotsey have them, and they said that it made a great difference in the
hea