inished killing poor Mrs. McSlanger's cat, if
you want to know what he has been doing. And a pretty row there'll be
about it, too!"

"Can't we hush it up?" said my uncle.

"Hush it up?" retorted my aunt. "If you'd heard the row, you wouldn't
sit there and talk like a fool. And if you'll take my advice," added my
aunt, "you'll set to work on this 'training,' or whatever it is, that
has got to be done to the dog, before any human life is lost."

My uncle was too busy to devote any time to the dog for the next day or
so, and all that could be done was to keep the animal carefully confined
to the house.

And a nice time we had with him! It was not that the animal was
bad-hearted. He meant well--he tried to do his duty. What was wrong
with him was that he was too hard-working. He wanted to do too much. He
started with an exaggerated and totally erroneous notion of his duties
and responsibilities. His idea was that he had been brought into the
house for the purpose of preventing any living human soul from coming
near it and of preventing any person who might by chance have managed to
slip in from ever again leaving it.

We endeavored to induce him to take a less exalted view of his position,
but in vain. That was the conception he had formed in his own mind
concerning his earthly task, and that conception he insisted on living
up to with, what appeared to us to be, unnecessary conscientiousness.

He so effectually frightened away all the trades people, that they at
last refused to enter the gate. All that they would do was to bring
their goods and drop them over the fence into the front garden, from
where we had to go and fetch them as we wanted them.

"I wish you'd run into the garden," my aunt would say to me--I was
stopping with them at the time--"and see if you can find any sugar; I
think there's some under the big rose-bush. If not, you'd better go to
Jones' and order some."

And on the cook's inquiring what she should get ready for lunch, my aunt
would say:

"Well, I'm sure, Jane, I hardly know. What have we? Are there any chops
in the garden, or was it a bit of steak that I noticed on the lawn?"

On the second afternoon the plumbers came to do a little job to the
kitchen boiler. The dog, being engaged at the time in the front of the
house, driving away the postman, did not notice their arrival. He
was broken-hearted at finding them there when he got downstairs, and
evidently blamed himself most bitterly. St