and then I began to get restless and was off
again. But I'm getting tired; I want to go to sleep."

"You're not very polite," I said, "to offer to tell a story, and then go
to sleep before you finish it."

"Look out for number one, my boy," said Dandy, with a yawn; "for if you
don't, no one else will," and he shut his eyes and was fast asleep in a
few minutes.

I sat and looked at him. What a handsome, good-natured, worthless dog he
was. A few days later, he told me the rest of his history. After a great
many wanderings, he happened home one day just as his master's yacht was
going to sail, and they chained him up till they went on board, so that
he could be an amusement on the passage to Fairport.

It was in November that Dandy came to us, and he stayed all winter. He
made fun of the Morrises all the time, and said they had a dull, poky,
old house, and he only stayed because Miss Laura was nursing him. He had
a little sore on his back that she soon found out was mange. Her father
said it was a bad disease for dogs to have, and Dandy had better be
shot; but she begged so hard for his life, and said she would cure him
in a few weeks that she was allowed to keep him. Dandy wasn't capable of
getting really angry, but he was as disturbed about having this disease
as he could be about anything. He said that he had got it from a little,
mangy dog, that he had played with a few weeks before. He was only with
the dog a little while, and didn't think he would take it, but it seemed
he knew what an easy thing it was to get.

Until he got well he was separated from us. Miss Laura kept him up in
the loft with the rabbits, where we could not go; and the boys ran him
around the garden for exercise. She tried all kinds of cures for him,
and I heard her say that although it was a skin disease, his blood must
be purified. She gave him some of the pills that she made out of sulphur
and butter for Jim, and Billy, and me, to keep our coats silky and
smooth. When they didn't cure him, she gave him a few drops of arsenic
every day, and washed the sore, and, indeed his whole body, with tobacco
water or carbolic soap. It was the tobacco water that cured him.

Miss Laura always put on gloves when she went near him, and used a brush
to wash him, for if a person takes mange from a dog, they may lose their
hair and their eyelashes. But if they are careful, no harm comes from
nursing a mangy dog, and I have never known of any one taking the
d