“Him?” says the black-and-tan.  “Why, he uses Nature’s Own Remedy.  He gets spifflicated.  At first when we go out he’s as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make ’em all jackpots.  By the time we’ve been in eight saloons he don’t care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish.  I’ve lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors.”

The pointer I got from that terrier—­vaudeville please copy—­set me to thinking.

One evening about 6 o’clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey.  I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me.  The black-and-tan was called “Tweetness.”  I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit.  Still “Lovey” is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the tail of one’s self respect.

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon.  I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook.

“Why, darn my eyes,” says the old man, with a grin; “darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain’t asking me in to take a drink.  Lemme see—­how long’s it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest?  I believe I’ll—­”

I knew I had him.  Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table.  For an hour he kept the Campbells coming.  I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home.

When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon.  Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street.

“Poor doggie,” says he; “good doggie.  She shan’t kiss you any more.  ’S a darned shame.  Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.”

I refused to leave.  I leaped and frisked around the old man’s legs happy as a pug on a rug.

“You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser,” I said to him—­“you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can’t you see that I don’t want to leave you?  Can’t you see that we’re both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail.  Why not cut that all out and be pards forever more?”

Maybe you’ll say he didn’t understand—­maybe he didn’t.  But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking.

“Doggie,” says he, finally, “we don’t live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300.  If I ever see that flat any more I’m a flat, and if you do you’re flatter; and that’s no flattery.  I’m offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.”