[Sidenote:  A Light in the Window]

She unfastened the front door, lighted a candle, and set it upon the sill of the front window.  Within twenty minutes Roger had come, entering the house so quietly that Barbara did not hear his step and was frightened when she saw him.

“Don’t scream,” he said, as he closed the door leading into the hall.  “I’m not a burglar—­only a struggling young law student with no prospects and even less hope.”

“I infer,” said Barbara, “that the Bascom liver is out of repair.”

“Correct.  It seems absurd, doesn’t it, to be affected by another man’s liver while you are supremely unconscious of your own?”

“There are more things in other people’s digestions than our philosophy can account for,” she replied, with a wicked perversion of classic phrase.  “What was the primary cause of the explosion?”

“It was all his own fault,” explained Roger.  “I like dogs almost as well as I do people, but it doesn’t follow that dogs should mix so constantly with people as they usually are allowed to.  I was never in favour of Judge Bascom’s bull pup keeping regular office hours with us, but he has, ever since the day he waddled in behind the Judge with a small chain as the connecting link.  I got so accustomed to his howling in the corner of the office where he was chained up that I couldn’t do my work properly when he was asleep.  So all went well until the Judge decided to remove the chain and give the pup more room to develop himself in.

[Sidenote:  “Pethood”]

“I tried to dissuade him, but it was no use.  I told him he would run away, and he said, with great dignity, that he did not desire for a pet anything which had to be tied up in order to be retained.  He observed that the restraining influence worked against the pethood so strongly as practically to obscure it.”

“New word?” laughed Barbara.

“I don’t know why it isn’t a good word,” returned Roger, in defence.  “If ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ and ‘brotherhood’ and all the other ‘hoods’ are good English, I see no reason why ‘pethood’ shouldn’t be used in the same sense.  The English language needs a lot of words added to it before it can be called complete.”

“One wouldn’t think so, judging by the size of the dictionary.  However, we’ll let it pass.  Go on with the story.”

“Things have been lively for a week or more.  The pup has romped around a good deal and has playfully bitten a client or two, but the Judge has been highly edified until to-day.  Fido got an important legal document which the Judge had just drafted, and literally chewed it to pulp.  Then he swallowed it, apparently with great relish.  I was told to make another, and my not knowing about it, and taking the liberty of asking a few necessary questions, produced the fireworks.  It wasn’t Fido’s fault, but mine.”

“How is Fido?” queried Barbara, with affected anxiety.