its eyes open, and it was fully two weeks old before he was allowed to
bring it home, though he was taken to choose it before it could walk very
well, and he went every day afterwards to see how it was getting along,
and to watch out that it did not get changed with the other little dogs.
The first night after he got it to his own house, the dog whined so with
homesickness that it kept everybody awake till Pony went to the woodshed,
where it was in the clothes-basket, and took it into his own bed; then it
went to sleep, and did not whine a bit. His father let him keep it there
that one night, but the next he made him put it out again, because he said
it would get the house full of fleas; and he said if it made much more
trouble he would make Pony take it back.

He was not a very good father about money, because when Pony went to ask
him for a five-cent piece he always wanted to know what it was for, and
even when it was for a good thing a fellow did not always like to tell.
If his father did not think it was a good thing he would not let Pony have
it, and then Pony would be ashamed to go back to the boys, for they would
say his father was stingy, though perhaps none of them had tried to get
money from their own fathers.

Every now and then the fellows tried to learn to smoke, and that was a
thing that Pony's father would not let him do. He would let him smoke the
drift-wood twigs, which the boys picked up along the river shore and
called smoke-wood, or he would let him smoke grapevine or the pods of the
catalpa, which were just like cigars, but he was mean about real tobacco.
Once, when he found a cigar in Pony's pocket, he threw it into the fire,
and said that if he ever knew him to have another he would have a talk
with him.

He was pretty bad about wanting Pony to weed his mother's flower-beds and
about going regularly to school, and always getting up in time for school.
To be sure, if a show or a circus came along, he nearly always took Pony
in, but then he was apt to take the girls, too, and he did not like to
have Pony go off with a crowd of boys, which was the only way to go into
a show; for if the fellows saw you with your family, all dressed up, and
maybe with your shoes on, they would make fun of you the next time they
caught you out.

He made Pony come in every night before nine o'clock, and even Christmas
Eve, or the night before Fourth of July, he would not let him stay up the
whole night. When he went