“Not I. Too much trouble.  I believe in taking things easy.”

“I should think you did,” I said, scornfully.  “You never put yourself out for any one, I notice; but, speaking of cropping ears, what do you think of it?”

“Well,” he said, with a sly glance at my head, “it isn’t a pleasant operation; but one might as well be out of the world as out of the fashion.  I don’t care, now my ears are done.”

“But,” I said, “think of the poor dogs that will come after you.”

“What difference does that make to me?” he said.  “I’ll be dead and out of the way.  Men can cut off their ears, and tails, and legs, too, if they want to.”

“Dandy,” I said, angrily, “you’re the most selfish dog that I ever saw.”

“Don’t excite yourself,” he said, coolly.  “Let me get on with my story.  When I was a few months old, I began to find the stable yard narrow, and wondered what there was outside of it.  I discovered a hole in the garden wall, and used to sneak out nights.  Oh, what fun it was.  I got to know a lot of street dogs, and we had gay times, barking under people’s windows and making them mad, and getting into back yards and chasing cats.  We used to kill a cat nearly every night.  Policeman would chase us, and we would run and run till the water just ran off our tongues, and we hadn’t a bit of breath left.  Then I’d go home and sleep all day, and go out again the next night.  When I was about a year old, I began to stay out days as well as nights.  They couldn’t keep me home.  Then I ran away for three months.  I got with an old lady on Fifth Avenue, who was very fond of dogs.  She had four white poodles, and her servants used to wash them, and tie up their hair with blue ribbons, and she used to take them for drives in her phaeton in the park, and they wore gold and silver collars.  The biggest poodle wore a ruby in his collar worth five hundred dollars.  I went driving, too, and sometimes we met my master.  He often smiled, and shook his head at me.  I heard him tell the coachman one day that I was a little blackguard, and he was to let me come and go as I liked.”

“If they had whipped you soundly,” I said, “it might have made a good dog of you.”

“I’m good enough now,” said Dandy, airily.  “The young ladies who drove with my master used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too good.  To go on with my story:  I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I got sick of her fussy ways.  She made a simpleton of herself over those poodles.  Each one had a high chair at the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and had meals with her, and the servants all called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss Tiny, and Miss Fluff.  One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got cross and bit Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me away from the house.”

“Speaking about fools, Dandy,” I said, “if it is polite to call a lady one, I should say that that lady was one.  Dogs shouldn’t be put out of their place.  Why didn’t she have some poor children at her table, and in her carriage, and let the dogs run behind?”