he doctor made the circuit of the house and stable yard but could find no
Zip. The howls seemed to come from up in the air somewhere as from the top
of the house, so finally the doctor rapped on the Hardway kitchen door to
ask the maid if Zip had not slipped in the house and gotten up on the
roof. He knocked repeatedly but no one answered. As he still heard Zip
howling and several people were talking all at once, he made bold to open
the door and step in. What he saw you already know. As by this time the
children had started to bathe Zip, the doctor was told to go right
upstairs. When he appeared in the door all the children stopped laughing
and stepped back to give him a chance to see Zip.

And this is what he saw.

Just one of Zip's eyes stuck out of a hole where the candy had dropped
off, and his poor little tail stuck out like a handle on the other side of
the ball. That was all that could be seen of Zip at that moment, for in
his numerous rolls, the candy had spread all over him until he was no
longer a dog with legs but just one round ball of molasses candy.

Seeing the water was fast climbing up to where it would reach Zip's mouth,
and knowing it would drown him, the doctor turned off the spigot. The
children had never thought that the poor dog could not move his head to
keep out of the water. Now the doctor hurriedly took off his coat, rolled
up his sleeves, and in a jiffy had Zip and the molasses ball in his hands
and was holding it so that the water could not get to Zip's head. Then
with one hand he gently threw the water upon the candy until it began to
loosen and fall off. First he released the little dog's head, which had
been bent down between his fore legs. As the candy began to loosen and
drop off, first one black ear stood up and then the other, and last the
little legs began to shoot out. All this made the children laugh to see
what appeared to be a big ball of candy develop into a little dog. At last
when Zip was entirely clean and had been wrapped in a big bath towel to
dry, Doctor Elsworth apologized to Helen for his little dog spoiling her
candy pull. But she declared that he had given them more fun than if he
had not come over, and the molasses had cooled and they had had a regular
candy pull.

[Illustration]

But when it came to apologizing to Mrs. Hardway for the mess Zip had
caused in the kitchen, the doctor did not know what to say, he felt so
badly about it. But he could have saved himsel