slippers
and lugged him in. He'd howled for three hours on a stretch and seemed
to be out for the long-distance championship. Not havin' looked up the
past performances in non-stop howlin' I couldn't say whether he'd hung
up a new record or not. I was willin' to concede the point. Besides, I
wanted a little sleep, even if he didn't. I expect we was lucky that he
picks out a berth behind the kitchen stove as the proper place for him
to snooze. He might have fancied the middle of our bed. If he had, we'd
camped on the floor, I suppose.

Another good break for us was the fact that he was willin' to be
tethered out daytimes on a wire traveler that Dominick fixed up for him.
Course, he did dig up a lot of Vee's favorite dahlia bulbs, and he
almost undermined a corner of the kitchen wing when he set out to put a
choice bone in cold storage, but he was so comical when he tamped the
bone down with his nose that Vee didn't complain.

"We can have the hole filled in and sodded over next spring," says Vee.

"Huh!" I says. "By next spring he'll be big enough to tunnel clear under
the house."

Looked like he would. At five months Buddy weighed 34 pounds and to
judge by his actions most of him was watchspring steel geared in high
speed. He was as hard as nails all over and as quick-motioned as a cat.
I'd got into the habit of turnin' him loose when I came home and
indulgin' in a half hour's rough house play with him. Buddy liked that.
He seemed to need it in his business of growin' up. If I happened to
forget, he wasn't backward in remindin' me of the oversight. He'd
developed a bark that was sort of a cross between an automobile shrieker
and throwin' a brick through a plate glass window, and when he put his
whole soul into expressin' his feelin's that way everybody within a mile
needed cotton in their ears. So I'd drape myself in an old raincoat, put
on a pair of heavy drivin' gauntlets, and frisk around with him.

No doubt about Buddy's being glad to see me on them occasions. His
affection was deep and violent. He'd let out a few joy yelps, take a
turn around the yard, and then come leapin' at me with his mouth open
and his eyes rollin' wild. My part of the game was to grab him by the
back of the neck and throw him before he could sink his teeth into any
part of me. Sometimes I missed. That was a point for Buddy. Then I'd pry
his jaws loose and he'd dash off for another circle. I couldn't say how
the score averaged. I was too