The sharp ringing of the doorbell broke in upon the quiet reflections of the three bachelors.  Mash, the cook, who was at that moment reading the fifteenth chapter of “The Buttery and the Boudoir:  A Tale of Real Life,” in her favorite weekly, threw down the paper in a passion, bounded up stairs, and admitted John Wesley Tiffles, or Wesley Tiffles, as he always subscribed himself on promissory notes and other worthless paper.  Mr. Tiffles chucked Mash familiarly under the chin (resented with a scornful look by Mash, who had learned from “The Buttery and the Boudoir” to set a proper value on herself), and then walked straight to the parlor, like one who knew he was a welcome guest.

And he was right.  For when he opened the door, and disclosed to the three bachelors the well-known laughing eyes, hopeful face, and spare figure of Wesley Tiffles, they hailed him with enthusiasm.  He was a walking cure for despondency, although he sometimes charged too high, in the shape of borrowed money, for his professional services.  But neither of the three bachelors had yet sustained that pecuniary tax which Wesley Tiffles always levied upon his friends, just before leaving them forever.  They formed a part of his reserve corps, which had latterly been sadly thinned out in Mr. Tiffles’s desperate contest with the world.

Mr. Tiffles shook hands with Marcus Wilkeson, giving him the grip of some unknown Order, slapped Overtop on the back, and playfully pulled the whiskers of Maltboy.  Then he filled a pipe, threw himself into a chair, adjusted his legs in the true form of a compass, and opened his coat ostentatiously.  All this in about ten seconds, and with a geniality that defied reproof.  He was the very embodiment of cheer.

“Prepare to be astonished,” said Mr. Tiffles, after his third whiff.  “I have a splendid idea.”  The three bachelors smiled, and nodded an intimation that they were prepared,

“I have had some impracticable notions in my time; but this is good, and you’ll say so.  You know that dog, Mark, two doors below—­the large yellow one, with cropped ears, and a tail like the handle of a shaving brush?”

Mr. Wilkeson replied that he had the pleasure of the animal’s acquaintance,

“Well, as I was passing the dog’s house on my way here, I slipped in the snow.  The dog, always on the alert for victims, took a mean advantage of my situation, and jumped after me through the open gate.  I scrambled to my feet, but not before he had fastened his teeth in my right leg——­”

“Good heavens! was he mad?” cried Overtop, who had a horror of dogs, and made wide circuits about them in the street.

“Can’t say as to that,” replied Wesley Tiffles, “but advise you to keep shy of him for the future, I was about to say that he bit me through the leg of my trowsers.  And on that very instant, as if by inspiration, I caught—­not the hydrophobia, but a magnificent idea.  Having got on my pins, I kicked the dog into his front yard, and immediately worked the idea into shape.  You’ll be sure to like it.”