p the grubs and the green flies perhaps."

"Absurd," cries the sparrow, and off he flies in disgust.

Then the pups forget all about it, and begin to lick each other's noses
and toes--I was nearly saying _toeses_--in the funniest way imaginable.
After that they go in for one of the most terrible sham fights that has
ever been fought.

"You'll be a badger, Zadkiel," cries Vogel, "and Zimmerman and I will
worry you to death."

So at it they go pell-mell. Zadkiel is hemmed up in a corner of the
cart-shed, and his brother and sister make pretence, to tear him limb
from limb. Zadkiel defends himself gallantly, but has to succumb at
last, for he is fairly rolled on his back, and in a few minutes is,
figuratively speaking, turned inside out. Then they espy the
good-natured admiring face of their mother, peering at them over the
corner of the straw, and at her they all rush. They make believe that
she is a fox, and her life is accordingly not worth an hours' purchase.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughs some one not two yards away, and looking up they
espy "master," who all unknown to them has been enjoying the fun for the
last half-hour.

"You dear, delightful little pets," he says, "why, you are as lively as
kittens, and as healthy and happy-looking as the summer's day is long.
You will do your mother credit yet. Your legs are straight, but work
will bend them into the right shape, then you'll be able to creep into
any rabbit's hole in the country,

"To beard a badger in his drain,
A wild wolf in his lair."

So in order to make these little rascals' legs bend to the proper shape,
master, as soon as they got a little older, used to bury bones for them
deep down in the garden earth, and get the whole trio to scrape and find
them.

This was grand fun, and by the time the puppies were six months old they
were just as shapely as the mother was, or as unshapely, if you like it
better, for after all perhaps the beauty of their bodies consisted in
their ugliness.

It isn't every one who knows how to rear puppies properly, but this
master did. He fed them on bread and milk, and broth and scraps of meat
four times a day, he never forgot to give them plenty of the freshest
of water, and as for straw, why they could at any time bury themselves
in it. But this was not all, for he made the little things his constant
companions, when he himself went out for exercise. And didn't they
scamper and didn't they dance, and frolic, and run! Man