a Home for Lost Dogs has only himself
to thank for the consequence.

The wistful little boy smiled up at us. He had a pinched face and large
eyes.

"Lost Dogs' 'Ome, sir?" he said courteously. "It's a good long way. Do
you want to get there quick?"

"Yes."

"Then if I was you, sir," replied the infant, edging to the mouth of an
alleyway, "I should bite a policeman!" And, with an ear-splitting yell,
he vanished.

We walked on, hot-faced.

"Little wretch!" said Stella.

"We simply asked for it," I rejoined. "What are we going to do next?"

My question was answered in a most incredible fashion, for at this
moment a man emerged from a shop on our right and set off down the
street before us. He wore a species of uniform; and emblazoned on the
front of his hat was the information that he was an official of the
Battersea Home for Lost and Starving Dogs.

"Wait a minute and I will ask him," I said, starting forward.

But my wife would not hear of it.

"Certainly not," she replied. "If we ask him he will simply offer to
show us the way. Then we shall have to talk to him--about hydrophobia,
and lethal chambers, and distemper--and it may be for miles. I simply
couldn't bear it! We shall have to tip him, too. Let us follow him
quietly."

To those who have never attempted to track a fellow creature
surreptitiously through the streets of London on a hot day, the feat may
appear simple. It is in reality a most exhausting, dilatory, and
humiliating exercise. Our difficulty lay not so much in keeping our
friend in sight as in avoiding frequent and unexpected collisions with
him. The general idea, as they say on field days, was to keep about
twenty yards behind him; but under certain circumstances distance has an
uncanny habit of annihilating itself. The man himself was no hustler.
Once or twice he stopped to light his pipe or converse with a friend.

During these interludes Stella and I loafed guiltily on the pavement,
pointing out to one another objects of local interest with the fatuous
officiousness of people in the foreground of hotel advertisements.
Occasionally he paused to contemplate the contents of a shop window. We
gazed industriously into the window next door. Our first window, I
recollect, was an undertaker's, with ready-printed expressions of grief
for sale on white porcelain disks. We had time to read them all. The
next was a butcher's. Here we stayed, perforce, so long that the
proprietor, who was of the