re. What kind is he, Kitty
Silver?"

"Miss Julia tell me he a poogle dog."

"A poodle," Florence corrected her, and then turned to Herbert in
supercilious astonishment. "A French Poodle! My goodness! I should think
you were old enough to know that much, anyway--goin' on fourteen years
old!"

"Well, I did know it," he declared. "I kind of knew it, anyhow; but I
sort of forgot it for once. Do you know if he bites, Kitty Silver?"

She was noncommittal. "He ain't bit nobody yit."

"I don't believe he'll bite," said Florence. "I bet he likes me. He
looks like he was taking a fancy to me, Kitty Silver. What's his name?"

"Gammire."

"What?"

"Gammire."

"What a funny name! Are you sure, Kitty Silver?"

"Gammire whut you' Aunt Julia tole _me_," Mrs. Silver insisted. "You kin
go on in the house an' ast her; she'll tell you the same."

"Well, anyway, I'm not afraid of him," said Florence; and she stepped
closer to the poodle, extending her hand to caress him. Then she shouted
as the dog, at her gesture, rose to his hind legs, and, as far as the
leash permitted, walked forward to meet her. She flung her arms about
him rapturously.

"Oh, the lovely thing!" she cried. "He walks on his hind legs! Why, he's
crazy about me!"

"Let him go," said Herbert. "I bet he don't like you any more than he
does anybody else. Leave go of him, and I bet he shows he likes me
better than he does you."

But when Florence released him, Gammire caressed them both impartially.
He leaped upon one, then upon the other, and then upon Kitty Silver with
a cordiality that almost unseated her.

"Let him off the leash," Florence cried. "He won't run away, 'cause the
gates are shut. Let him loose and see what he'll do."

Mrs. Silver snapped the catch of the leash, and Gammire departed in the
likeness of a ragged black streak. With his large and eccentric ears
flapping back in the wind and his afterpart hunched in, he ran round and
round the little orchard like a dog gone wild. Altogether a comedian,
when he heard children shrieking with laughter, he circled the more
wildly; then all upon an unexpected instant came to a dead halt, facing
his audience, his nose on the ground between his two forepaws, his
hindquarters high and unstooping. And, seeing they laughed at this, too,
he gave them enough of it, then came back to Kitty Silver and sat by
her feet, a spiral of pink tongue hanging from a wide-open mouth roofed
with black.

Florence resum