ng than a
dog. Billy rather put on airs when he came up to the farm to see us, but
he was such a dear, little dog, in spite of being almost spoiled by his
master, that Jim and I could not get angry with him. In a few days
they went away, and we heard nothing but good news from them, till last
winter. Then a letter came to Miss Laura from a nurse in a New York
hospital. She said that the Italian was very near his end, and he wanted
her to write to Mrs. Gray to tell her that he had sold all his animals
but the little dog that she had so kindly given him. He was sending
him back to her, and with his latest breath he would pray for heaven's
blessing on the kind lady and her family that had befriended him when he
was in trouble.

The next day Billy arrived, a thin, white scarecrow of a dog. He was
sick and unhappy, and would eat nothing, and started up at the slightest
sound. He was listening for the Italian's footsteps, but he never came,
and one day Mr. Harry looked up from his newspaper and said, "Laura,
Bellini is dead." Miss Laura's eyes filled with tears, and Billy, who
had jumped up when he heard his master's name, fell back again. He
knew what they meant, and from that instant he ceased listening for
footsteps, and lay quite still till he died. Miss Laura had him put in
a little wooden box, and buried him in a corner of the garden, and when
she is working among her flowers, she often speaks regretfully of him,
and of poor Dandy, who lies in the garden at Fairport.

Bella, the parrot, lives with Mrs. Morris, and is as smart as ever. I
have heard that parrots live to a very great age. Some of them even get
to be a hundred years old. If that is the case, Bella will outlive all
of us. She notices that I am getting blind and feeble, and when I go
down to call on Mrs. Morris, she calls out to me, "Keep a stiff upper
lip, Beautiful Joe. Never say die, Beautiful Joe. Keep the game a-going,
Beautiful Joe."

Mrs. Morris says that she doesn't know where Bella picks up her slang
words. I think it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in
the summer he often says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, "Come out into
the garden, Bella," and he lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella
perches on a branch near him, and he talks to her by the hour. Anyway,
it is in the autumn after he leaves Riverdale that Bella always shocks
Mrs. Morris with her slang talk.

I am glad that I am to end my days in Riverdale. Fairport was