“Suh?”

Debouching sidewise she came into fuller view, but retired a few steps.  “Whut I doin’ whur, Mista Atwater?”

“How’d that dog get on my front steps?”

Her face became noncommittal entirely.  “Thishere dog?  He just settin’ there, suh.”

“How’d he get in the yard?”

“Mus’ somebody up an’ brung him in.”

“Who did it?”

“You mean:  Who up an’ brung him in, suh?”

“I mean:  Who does he belong to?”

“Mus’ be Miss Julia’s.  I reckon he is, so fur.”

“What!  She knows I don’t allow dogs on the place.”

“Yessuh.”

Mr. Atwater’s expression became more outraged and determined.  “You mean to say that somebody’s trying to give her another dog after all I’ve been through with——­”

“It look that way, suh.”

“Who did it?”

“Miss Julia ain’t sayin’; an’ me, I don’ know who done it no mo’n the lilies of the valley whut toil not neither do they spins.”

In response, Mr. Atwater was guilty of exclamations lacking in courtesy; and turning again toward Gammire, he waved his arm.  “Didn’t you hear me tell you to get out of here?”

Gammire observed the gesture, and at once “sat up,” placing his forepaws over his nose in prayer, but Mr. Atwater was the more incensed.

“Get out of here, you woolly black scoundrel!”

Mrs. Silver uttered a cry of injury before she perceived that she had mistaken her employer’s intention.  Gammire also appeared to mistake it, for he came down upon the lawn, rose to his full height, on his “hind legs,” and in that humanlike posture “walked” in a wide circle.  He did this with an affectation of conscientiousness thoroughly hypocritical; for he really meant to be humorous.

“My heavens!” Mr. Atwater cried, lamenting.  “Somebody’s given her one of those things at last!  I don’t like any kind of dog, but if there’s one dam thing on earth I won’t stand, it’s a trick poodle!”

And while the tactless Gammire went on, “walking” a circle round him, Mr. Atwater’s eye furiously searched the borders of the path, the lawn, and otherwheres, for anything that might serve as missile.  He had never kicked a dog, or struck one with his hand, in his life; he had a theory that it was always better to throw something.  “Idiot poodle!” he said.

But Gammire’s tricks were not idiocy in the eyes of Mr. Atwater’s daughter, as she watched them.  They had brought to her mind the tricks of the Jongleur of Notre Dame, who had nothing to offer heaven itself, to mollify heaven’s rulers, except his entertainment of juggling and nonsense; so that he sang his thin jocosities and played his poor tricks before the sacred figure of the Madonna; but when the pious would have struck him down for it, she miraculously came to life just long enough to smile on him and show that he was right to offer his absurd best.  And thus, as Julia watched the little Jongleur upon