As time went by Jan was quite happy and learned to love his gentle playmates very dearly.  He grew accustomed to seeing the artists sitting before boards, painting pictures like those on the walls.  Even the little girls, Ruth and Charlotte, sometimes sat on the ground and made him lie still while they worked away with pencils and pieces of paper and told him they were making his picture to put in a book.  It did not quite explain matters to Jan when Ruth held up one of these papers in front of his nose and said, “You see, Bruin, we’re going to be ill—­us—­trators like mother when we grow up, and then we’ll put you in a book, maybe!”

After Jan had several good baths the ugly black dye began to wear off and his white shirt-front and paws and the white streak on his nose showed plainly.  Then the rusty black fur on his entire body became its natural tawny red and grew rapidly.  The Melvilles now realized that Jan had been stolen and often wondered who had lost him.  They asked the few people they saw but none of them had heard of such a dog, so the family felt that Jan belonged to them.

Ruth and Charlotte were much interested when their parents told them that Bruin was a St. Bernard dog, and all about the noble animals that lived at the Hospice, for the two artists had visited the place many years before Ruth or Charlotte had been born.  When their mother finished telling them these things, Ruth exclaimed, “Mother!  Then you and daddy and Charlotte and me are all St. Bernard dogs, because we found Bruin when he was lost, didn’t we?”

Jan was not the only pet of this family.  The “Melville Menagerie” was what their mother called the collection of animals.  There were two grown-up goats, named Captain Kidd and Mrs. Cream; two baby-goats, Peaches and Strawberry; a mother cat named Chicago, because she was smoke color, and her three kittens, Texas, California, and Pennsylvania.  Next was the canary bird, Pitty-Sing, and last, but not least, five horn-toads which were nameless, but who lived peacefully together in a box with sand to burrow in.

All of these members of the family interested Jan, but he wanted to be friends with the old cat and her kittens, because he missed Hippity-Hop.  Whenever he tried to go near them, the four jumped to their feet, arched their backs, and spat at him so rudely that he gave up making friends, and decided that only three-legged cats liked dogs.

Each day about three o’clock all work was put aside by the artists, for this was the time they went to visit “The Land of Make-Believe.”  Sometimes they were gypsies, and supper was cooked over a campfire among the oak trees.  Again, they pretended Jan was a big bear and he found it great fun to chase after the children while they ran away as though really afraid of him.  Then it was “Little Red Riding Hood” with Jan for the wolf, but he did not eat any one, like the wolf did, for he knew he would have a nice piece of meat cooked over the wood fire as they all sat about on the ground and pretended they had no place to sleep excepting underneath the trees.  When the stars began to twinkle, the sunbonnet children said that the angels were lighting the candles in Heaven, and very soon it was time to go home for the night.