ish home to flop aroun' the house an' keep gittin' under a body's
feet every way they turn! An' what's he goin' to eat, anyways, I'd
like to know?"

"He eats _fish_, but he ain't no manner of fish himself, mother, no
more than you nor I be!" explained Captain Ephraim, with a grin. "An'
he won't be in your way a mite, for he'll live out in the yard, an'
I'll sink the half of a molasses hogshead out there an' fill it with
salt water for him to play in. He's an amusin' little beggar, an'
gentle as a kitten."

"Well, I'd have you know that _I_ wash my hands of him, Ephraim!"
declared Mrs. Barnes, with emphasis. And so it came about that the
Pup presently found himself, not Libby's special pet, but Captain
Ephraim's.

Two important members of the Barnes family were a large yellow cat and
a small, tangle-haired, blue-gray mop of a Skye terrier. At the first
glimpse of the Pup, the yellow cat had fled, with tail as big as a
bottle-brush, to the top of the kitchen dresser, where she crouched
growling, with eyes like green full moons. The terrier, on the other
hand, whose name was Toby, had shown himself rather hospitable to the
mild-eyed stranger. Unacquainted with fear, and always inclined to be
scornful of whatever conduct the yellow cat might indulge in, he had
approached the newcomer with a friendly wagging of his long-haired
stump of a tail, and sniffed at him with pleased curiosity. The Pup,
his lonely heart hungering for comradeship, had met this civil advance
with effusion; and thenceforward the two were fast friends.

By the time the yellow cat and Mrs. Barnes had both got over regarding
the Pup as a stranger, he had become an object of rather distant
interest to them. When he played at wrestling matches with Toby in the
yard,--which always ended by the Pup rolling indulgently on his back,
while Toby, with yelps of excitement, mounted triumphantly between
his fanning flippers,--the yellow cat would crouch upon the woodpile
close by and regard the proceedings with intent but non-committal eye.
Mrs. Barnes, for her part, would open the kitchen door and
surreptitiously coax the Pup in, with the lure of a dish of warm milk,
which he loved extravagantly. Then--this being while Libby was at
school and Captain Ephraim away on the water--she would seat herself
in the rocking-chair by the window with her knitting and watch the Pup
and Toby at their play. The young seal was an endless source of
speculation to her.

"To th