“Dear Aunt Eliza:  I hope you are quite well.  It is sort of lonely living down here on the beach and there are a good many rough characters, so we are looking for a dog for companionship and protection Almost any kind of healthy dog would do and you may be sure he would have a good home.  Hoping to see you soon.  Your affectionate niece, Bashemath.”

“I hope she’ll send us Andrew,” said Appleboy fervently.

“I guess she will!” nodded Bashemath.

* * * * *

“What on earth is that sign?” wrathfully demanded Mrs. Tunnygate one morning about a week later as she looked across the Appleboys’ lawn from her kitchen window.  “Can you read it, Herman?”

Herman stopped trying to adjust his collar and went out on the piazza.

“Something about ’dog’,” he declared finally.

“Dog!” she exclaimed.  “They haven’t got a dog!”

“Well,” he remarked, “that’s what the sign says:  ‘Beware of the dog’!  And there’s something above it.  Oh!  ’No crossing this property.  Trespassing forbidden.’”

“What impudence!” avowed Mrs. Tunnygate.  “Did you ever know such people!  First they try and take land that don’t belong to them, and then they go and lie about having a dog.  Where are they, anyway?”

“I haven’t seen ’em this morning,” he answered.  “Maybe they’ve gone away and put up the sign so we won’t go over.  Think that’ll stop us!”

“In that case they’ve got another think comin’!” she retorted angrily.  “I’ve a good mind to have you go over and tear up the whole place!”

“’N pull up the hedge?” he concurred eagerly.  “Good chance!”

Indeed, to Mr. Tunnygate it seemed the supreme opportunity both to distinguish himself in the eyes of his blushing bride and to gratify that perverse instinct inherited from our cave-dwelling ancestors to destroy utterly—­in order, perhaps, that they may never seek to avenge themselves upon us—­those whom we have wronged.  Accordingly Mr. Tunnygate girded himself with his suspenders, and with a gleam of fiendish exultation in his eye stealthily descended from his porch and crossed to the hole in the hedge.  No one was in sight except two barefooted searchers after clams a few hundred yards farther up the beach and a man working in a field half a mile away.  The bay shimmered in the broiling August sun and from a distant grove came the rattle and wheeze of locusts.  Throggs Neck blazed in silence, and utterly silent was the house of Appleboy.

With an air of bravado, but with a slightly accelerated heartbeat, Tunnygate thrust himself through the hole in the hedge and looked scornfully about the Appleboy lawn.  A fierce rage worked through his veins.  A lawn!  What effrontery!  What business had these condescending second-raters to presume to improve a perfectly good beach which was satisfactory to other folks?  He’d show ’em!  He took a step in the direction of the transplanted sea grass.  Unexpectedly the door of the Appleboy kitchen opened.