e was to let me come and go as I
liked."

"If they had whipped you soundly," I said, "it might have made a good
dog of you."

"I'm good enough now," said Dandy, airily. "The young ladies who drove
with my master used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too
good. To go on with my story: I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I
got sick of her fussy ways. She made a simpleton of herself over those
poodles. Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they
always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all
called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff.
One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit
Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away
from the house."

"Speaking about fools, Dandy," I said, "if it is polite to call a lady
one, I should say that that lady was one. Dogs shouldn't be put out of
their place. Why didn't she have some poor children at her table, and in
her carriage, and let the dogs run behind?"

"Easy to see you don't know New York," said Dandy, with a laugh. "Poor
children don't live with rich, old ladies. Mrs. Tibbett hated children,
anyway. Then dogs like poodles would get lost in the mud, or killed in
the crowd if they ran behind a carriage. Only knowing dogs like me can
make their way about." I rather doubted this speech; but I said nothing,
and he went on, patronizingly: "However, Joe, thou hast reason, as the
French say. Mrs. Judge Tibbett 'didn't' give her dogs exercise
enough. Their claws were as long as Chinamen's nails, and the hair grew
over their pads, and they had red eyes and were always sick, and she had
to dose them with medicine, and call them her poor, little,
'weeny-teeny, sicky-wicky doggies.' Bah! I got disgusted with her. When
I left her, I ran away to her niece's, Miss Ball's. She was a sensible
young lady, and she used to scold her aunt for the way in which she
brought up her dogs. She was almost too sensible, for her pug and I were
rubbed and scrubbed within an inch of our lives, and had to go for such
long walks that I got thoroughly sick of them. A woman, whom the
servants called Trotsey, came every morning, and took the pug and me by
our chains, and sometimes another dog or two, and took us for long
tramps in quiet streets. That was Trotsey's business, to walk dogs, and
Miss Ball got a great many fashionable young ladies who could not
exercise their dogs