“He’s certainly a mighty queer-lookin’ dog,” said Herbert.  “I’ve seen a few like that, but I can’t remember where.  What kind is he, Kitty Silver?”

“Miss Julia tell me he a poogle dog.”

“A poodle,” Florence corrected her, and then turned to Herbert in supercilious astonishment.  “A French Poodle!  My goodness!  I should think you were old enough to know that much, anyway—­goin’ on fourteen years old!”

“Well, I did know it,” he declared.  “I kind of knew it, anyhow; but I sort of forgot it for once.  Do you know if he bites, Kitty Silver?”

She was noncommittal.  “He ain’t bit nobody yit.”

“I don’t believe he’ll bite,” said Florence.  “I bet he likes me.  He looks like he was taking a fancy to me, Kitty Silver.  What’s his name?”

“Gammire.”

“What?”

“Gammire.”

“What a funny name!  Are you sure, Kitty Silver?”

“Gammire whut you’ Aunt Julia tole me,” Mrs. Silver insisted.  “You kin go on in the house an’ ast her; she’ll tell you the same.”

“Well, anyway, I’m not afraid of him,” said Florence; and she stepped closer to the poodle, extending her hand to caress him.  Then she shouted as the dog, at her gesture, rose to his hind legs, and, as far as the leash permitted, walked forward to meet her.  She flung her arms about him rapturously.

“Oh, the lovely thing!” she cried.  “He walks on his hind legs!  Why, he’s crazy about me!”

“Let him go,” said Herbert.  “I bet he don’t like you any more than he does anybody else.  Leave go of him, and I bet he shows he likes me better than he does you.”

But when Florence released him, Gammire caressed them both impartially.  He leaped upon one, then upon the other, and then upon Kitty Silver with a cordiality that almost unseated her.

“Let him off the leash,” Florence cried.  “He won’t run away, ’cause the gates are shut.  Let him loose and see what he’ll do.”

Mrs. Silver snapped the catch of the leash, and Gammire departed in the likeness of a ragged black streak.  With his large and eccentric ears flapping back in the wind and his afterpart hunched in, he ran round and round the little orchard like a dog gone wild.  Altogether a comedian, when he heard children shrieking with laughter, he circled the more wildly; then all upon an unexpected instant came to a dead halt, facing his audience, his nose on the ground between his two forepaws, his hindquarters high and unstooping.  And, seeing they laughed at this, too, he gave them enough of it, then came back to Kitty Silver and sat by her feet, a spiral of pink tongue hanging from a wide-open mouth roofed with black.

Florence resumed the peeling of her orange.

“Who do you think gave Gammire to Aunt Julia?” she asked.

“I ain’t stedyin’ about it.”

“Yes, but who do you guess?”

“I ain’t——­”

“Well, but if you had to be burned to death or guess somebody, who would you guess?”