“Yes ’m, yes ’m,” answered the children, and fetching the book she read the pretty account, shortening and simplifying it here and there to suit her hearers.

“’I invited the two dogs to dine and spend the evening, and they came with their master, who was a Frenchman.  He had been a teacher in a deaf and dumb school, and thought he would try the same plan with dogs.  He had also been a conjurer, and now was supported by Blanche and her daughter Lyda.  These dogs behaved at dinner just like other dogs, but when I gave Blanche a bit of cheese and asked if she knew the word for it, her master said she could spell it.  So a table was arranged with a lamp on it, and round the table were laid the letters of the alphabet painted on cards.  Blanche sat in the middle waiting till her master told her to spell cheese, which she at once did in French, F R O M A G E. Then she translated a word for us very cleverly.  Some one wrote pferd, the German for horse, on a slate.  Blanche looked at it and pretended to read it, putting by the slate with her paw when she had done.  “Now give us the French for that word,” said the man, and she instantly brought C H E V A L.  “Now, as you are at an Englishman’s house, give it to us in English,” and she brought me H O R S E. Then we spelt some words wrong and she corrected them with wonderful accuracy.  But she did not seem to like it, and whined and growled and looked so worried that she was allowed to go and rest and eat cakes in a corner.

“’Then Lyda took her place on the table, and did sums on a slate with a set of figures.  Also mental arithmetic which was very pretty.  “Now, Lyda,” said her master, “I want to see if you understand division.  Suppose you had ten bits of sugar and you met ten Prussian dogs, how many lumps would you, a French dog, give to each of the Prussians?” Lyda very decidedly replied to this with a cipher.  “But, suppose you divided your sugar with me, how many lumps would you give me?” Lyda took up the figure five and politely presented it to her master.’”

[Illustration:  ALFRED TENNYSON BARLOW.]

“Wasn’t she smart?  Sanch can’t do that,” exclaimed Ben, forced to own that the French doggie beat his cherished pet.

“He is not too old to learn.  Shall I go on?” asked Miss Celia, seeing that the boys liked it though Betty was absorbed with the doll and Bab deep in a puzzle.

“Oh yes!  What else did they do?”

“’They played a game of dominoes together, sitting in chairs opposite each other, and touched the dominoes that were wanted; but the man placed them and kept telling how the game went, Lyda was beaten and hid under the sofa, evidently feeling very badly about it.  Blanche was then surrounded with playing-cards, while her master held another pack and told us to choose a card; then he asked her what one had been chosen, and she always took up the right one in her teeth.  I was asked to go into another room, put