ed us into the house, until he was sitting up in the
kitchen, his forepaws paddling the air, his tail thudding on the floor.
Then she said, brimming over with admiration, though she tried to look
severe;

"And if you think I'll have sthray dawgs in my kitchen you're very much
mistook.... Aw, it's a darlin' wee thing, isn't it?" For the Scotty, seeing
that she had seated herself, had jumped to her lap and now sat there, nose
in air, looking superbly at home.

We closed about her, telling, in chorus, the story of the bullet-headed
boy, and the garbage heap, and enlarging dramatically on the episode of the
tin can.

"And may we please keep him?" we entreated, "just for a few days till we
find the owner of it! Mrs. Handsomebody will never know, for he can live in
the coal cellar 'cept when we take him little walks on a string!"

"If you don't let me do this I'll never marry you, so there!" This from
Angel.

"Have it your own way, thin," moaned Mary Ellen, capitulating, as usual,
under the fire of Angel's pleading, "but moind, if she iver finds us out,
it's mesilf will be walkin' the streets widout a character."

II

So began a merry interlude in the drabness of the Handsomebody regime. Mrs.
Handsomebody kept to her room for nearly three weeks, unable to put her
foot to the floor. On the first evening, she called us to her bedside; and,
while we stood in a row, bewildered before the phenomenon of seeing her
prostrate, she lectured us solemnly on the duties and responsibilities of
our position, and implored us not to make the period of her enforced
retirement a nightmare, because of our pranks. We promised, marvelling that
bed-clothes could be kept so tidy, and fervently wishing she would display
the knee that had been so severely "put out." It was a commonplace for Mrs.
Handsomebody's temper to be thus afflicted, but her knee, never.

When we returned to the kitchen, we found Mary Ellen sitting in a pensive
attitude. Her forefinger pressed against her knit brow, her stout ankles
crossed.

"The little dawg has been tellin' me a secret," she volunteered in
explanation, "a deep, dark secret. She's been tellin' me in a way of
spakin' that she's a lady-dawg, God help her."

"But how did she tell you, Mary Ellen? Did she speak out loud?" We were
breathless with excitement.

"She did not. I ast her, for I had me suspicion, if she was a lady-dawg an'
I sez--'If yez are wag yer tail three times,' an' the words was scar