t's eye, a red-rimmed eye and sore--and so
demoniacally malignant that Clematis, indescribably startled, would
have withdrawn his own countenance at once--but it was too late. With a
fearful oath Flopit sprang upward and annexed himself to the under lip
of the horrified Clematis.

Horror gave place to indignation instantly; and as Miss Parcher and her
guest turned, screaming, Clematis's self-command went all to pieces.

Miss Parcher became faint and leaned against the hedge along which they
had been passing, but her visitor continued to scream, while Mr. Watson
endeavored to kick Clematis without ruining Flopit--a difficult matter.

Flopit was baresark from the first, and the mystery is where he
learned the dog-cursing that he did. In spite of the David-and-Goliath
difference in size it would be less than justice to deny that a very
fair dog-fight took place. It was so animated, in truth, that the one
expert in such matters who was present found himself warmly interested.
Genesis relieved himself of the burden of the wash-tub upon his back,
dropped the handle of that other in which he had a half-interest,
and watched the combat; his mouth, like his eyes, wide open in simple
pleasure.

He was not destined to enjoy the spectacle to the uttermost; a furious
young person struck him a frantic, though harmless, blow with a pink
parasol.

"You stop them!" she screamed. "You make that horrible dog stop, or I'll
have you arrested!"

Genesis rushed forward.

"You CLEM!" he shouted.

And instantly Clematis was but a whitish and brownish streak along the
hedge. He ran like a dog in a moving picture when they speed the film,
and he shot from sight, once more, round the corner, while Flopit, still
cursing, was seized and squeezed in his mistress's embrace.

But she was not satisfied. "Where's that laundryman with the tin thing
on his head?" she demanded. "He ought to be arrested for having such a
dog. It's HIS dog, isn't it? Where is he?"

Genesis turned and looked round about the horizon, mystified. William
Sylvanus Baxter and the clothes-boiler had disappeared from sight.

"If he owns that dog," asserted the still furious owner of Flopit, "I
WILL have him arrested. Where is he? Where is that laundryman?"

"Why, he," Genesis began slowly, "HE ain' no laundrym--" He came to an
uncertain pause. If she chose to assume, with quick feminine intuition,
that the dog was William's and that William was a laundryman, it was not