“You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser,” I said to him—“you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can’t you see that I don’t want to leave you? Can’t you see that we’re both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards for evermore?”

Maybe you’ll say he didn’t understand—maybe he didn’t. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.

“Doggie,” says he finally, “we don’t live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more I’m a flat, and if you do you’re flatter; and that’s no flattery. I’m offering 60 to I that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.”

There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third Street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.

On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun:

“Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.”

But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said:

“You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of a door-mat, do you know what I’m going to call you?”

I thought of “Lovey,” and I whined dolefully.

“I’m going to call you ‘Pete,’ ” says my master; and if I’d had five tails I couldn’t have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.