When these pets died, there was an expensive cemetery in Brooklyn especially for their interment; and they would be duly embalmed and buried in plush-lined casket, and would have costly marble monuments.  When one of Mrs. Smythe’s best loved pugs had fallen ill of congestion of the liver, she had had tan-bark put upon the street in front of her house; and when in spite of this the dog died, she had sent out cards edged in black, inviting her friends to a “memorial service.”  Also she showed Montague a number of books with very costly bindings, in which were demonstrated the unity, simplicity, and immortality of the souls of cats and dogs.

Apparently the sentimental Mrs. Smythe was willing to talk about these pets all through dinner; and so was her aunt, a thin and angular spinster, who sat on Montague’s other side.  And he was willing to listen—­he wanted to know it all.  There were umbrellas for dogs, to be fastened over their backs in wet weather; there were manicure and toilet sets, and silver medicine-chests, and jewel-studded whips.  There were sets of engraved visiting-cards; there were wheel-chairs in which invalid cats and dogs might be taken for an airing.  There were shows for cats and dogs, with pedigrees and prizes, and nearly as great crowds as the Horse Show; Mrs. Smythe’s St. Bernards were worth seven thousand dollars apiece, and there were bull-dogs worth twice that.  There was a woman who had come all the way from the Pacific coast to have a specialist perform an operation upon the throat of her Yorkshire terrier!  There was another who had built for her dog a tiny Queen Anne cottage, with rooms papered and carpeted and hung with lace curtains!  Once a young man of fashion had come to the Waldorf and registered himself and “Miss Elsie Cochrane”; and when the clerk made the usual inquiries as to the relationship of the young lady, it transpired that Miss Elsie was a dog, arrayed in a prim little tea-gown, and requiring a room to herself.  And then there was a tale of a cat which had inherited a life-pension from a forty-thousand-dollar estate; it had a two-floor apartment and several attendants, and sat at table and ate shrimps and Italian chestnuts, and had a velvet couch for naps, and a fur-lined basket for sleeping at night!

Four days of horses were enough for Montague, and on Friday morning, when Siegfried Harvey called him up and asked if he and Alice would come out to “The Roost” for the week-end, he accepted gladly.  Charlie Carter was going, and volunteered to take them in his car; and so again they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge—­“the Jewish passover,” as Charlie called it—­and went out on Long Island.