g, nobody knew how
or when, Chloe eloped to her old quarters.

Again she was fetched back; this time to the parlour: and again she ran
away. Then she was tied up, and she gnawed the string; chained up, and
she slipped the collar; and we began to think, that unless we could find
some good home for her at a distance, there was nothing for it but to
return her altogether to Mrs. King, when a letter from a friend at Bath
gave a new aspect to Chloe's affairs.

The letter was from a dear friend of mine--a young married lady, with an
invalid husband, and one lovely little girl, a damsel of some two years
old, commonly called "Pretty May." They wanted a pet dog to live in
the parlour, and walk out with mother and daughter--not a cross yelping
Blenheim spaniel, (those troublesome little creatures spoil every body's
manners who is so unlucky as to possess them, the first five minutes of
every morning call being invariably devoted to silencing the lapdog and
apologising to the visiter,)--not a pigmy Blenheim, but a large, noble
animal, something, in short, as like as might be to Dash, with whom Mrs.
Keating had a personal acquaintance, and for whom, in common with most
of his acquaintances, she entertained a very decided partiality: I do
not believe that there is a dog in England who has more friends than my
Dash. A spaniel was wanted at Bath like my Dash: and what spaniel could
be more like Dash than Chloe? A distant home was wanted for Chloe: and
what home could open a brighter prospect of canine felicity than to be
the pet of Mrs. Keating, and the playmate of Pretty May? It seemed
one of those startling coincidences which amuse one by their singular
fitness and propriety, and make one believe that there is more in the
exploded doctrine of sympathies than can be found in our philosophy.

So, upon the matter being explained to her, thought Mrs. King; and
writing duly to announce the arrival of Chloe, she was deposited, with a
quantity of soft hay, in a large hamper, and conveyed into Belford by my
father himself, who would entrust to none other the office of delivering
her to the coachman, and charging that very civil member of a very civil
body of men to have especial care of the pretty creature, who was parted
with for no other fault than an excess of affection and fidelity to her
first kind protectors.

Nothing could exceed the brilliancy of her reception. Pretty May, the
sweet smiling child of a sweet smiling mother, had b