lth and appearance of their pets. Trotsey got fifteen cents an hour
for a dog. Goodness, what appetites those walks gave us, and didn't we
make the dog biscuits disappear? But it was a slow life at Miss Ball's.
We only saw her for a little while every day. She slept till noon. After
lunch she played with us for a little while in the greenhouse, then she
was off driving or visiting, and in the evening she always had company,
or went to a dance, or to the theatre. I soon made up my mind that I'd
run away. I jumped out of a window one fine morning, and ran home. I
stayed there for a long time. My mother had been run over by a cart and
killed, and I wasn't sorry. My master never bothered his head about me,
and I could do as I liked. One day when I was having a walk, and meeting
a lot of dogs that I knew, a little boy came behind me, and before I
could tell what he was doing, he had snatched me up, and was running off
with me. I couldn't bite him, for he had stuffed some of his rags in my
mouth. He took me to a tenement house, in a part of the city that I
had never been in before. He belonged to a very poor family. My faith,
weren't they badly off six children, and a mother, and father, all
living in two tiny rooms. Scarcely a bit of meat did I smell while I was
there. I hated their bread and molasses, and the place smelled so badly
that I thought I should choke.

"They kept me shut up in their dirty rooms for several days; and the
brat of a boy that caught me slept with his arm around me at night. The
weather was hot and sometimes we couldn't sleep, and they had to go up
on the roof. After a while, they chained me up in a filthy yard at the
back of the house, and there I thought I should go mad. I would have
liked to bite them all to death, if I had dared. It's awful to be
chained, especially for a dog like me that loves his freedom. The flies
worried me, and the noises distracted me, and my flesh would fairly
creep from getting no exercise. I was there nearly a month, while they
were waiting for a reward to be offered. But none came; and one day, the
boy's father, who was a street peddler, took me by my chain and led me
about the streets till he sold me. A gentleman got me for his little
boy, but I didn't like the look of him, so I sprang up and bit his hand,
and he dropped the chain, and I dodged boys and policemen and finally
got home more dead than alive, and looking like a skeleton. I had a good
time for several weeks,