“Well,” averred the dog catcher, mildly pleased with the compliment, “it ain’t for me to say as to that. But there don’t many folks find me a-nappin’, I’m sittin’ here to tell all an’ sundry. Now, ’bout that dog—”
“Yes,” repeated Link admiringly, “you’re a mighty clever man! Only I’ve figgered that you aren’t quite clever enough to spell your own name right. Folks who know you real well think you’ve got an ‘h’ in it that ought to be a ‘k.’ But that’s no fault of yours, Shunk. You do your best to live up to the name you ought by rights to have. So—”
"You’ll leave my name be!" thundered the dog catcher.
“I sure will,” assented Link. “By the way, did you ever happen to hear how near you came to not gettin’ this office of dog catcher down at Hampton?”
“No,” grunted the other, “I didn’t hear nothin’ of the kind. An’ it ain’t true. Mayor Wipple app’inted me, same week as he took office—like he had promised he would if I’d git my brother an’ the three boys to vote for him an’ if I’d c’ntribbit thutty-five dollars to his campaign fund. There wasn’t ever any doubt I’d git the app’intment.”
“Oh, yes, there was,” cheerily denied Link, with a sidelong glance at his pretty wife and her six-year-old sister, Olive Chatham, who were advancing along the lane from the house to note the progress of the stonework piers. "There was a lot of doubt. If it hadn’t been for just one thing you’d never have landed the job.
“It was this way,” he continued, winking encouragement to Mrs. Ferris who had come to a momentary and disapproving halt at sight of her husband’s uninvited guest. “The day after Wipple was elected mayor, I asked him who he was aiming to appoint to the high and loocrative office of dog catcher. He told me he was goin’ to appoint you. I says to him, ‘But Eben Shunk’s the meanest man in town!’ And Wipple answers ‘I know he is. He’s as mean as pussly. That’s why I’ve picked him out for dog catcher. No decent feller would take such a dirty job.’ That’s what Mayor Wipple told me, Shunk. So you see if you hadn’t happened to be the meanest man in Hampton, you’d never ’a’ got—”
"It’s a durn lie!" bellowed the irate Shunk. “It’s a lie! Wipple never said no such a thing. He—”
"What’s in the wagon, there?" spoke up little Olive Chatham, as a dolorous whimpering rose from the depths of the covered cart. “It sounds awful unhappy.”
“It is ‘awful unhappy,’ Baby,” answered her brother-in-law. “Mr. Shunk has been on his rounds, picking up some more poor little stray curs, along the road. He’s going to carry them to a filthy pen in his filthy back yard and leave them to starve and be chewed by bigger dogs there, while he pikes off to get his dollar, each, for them. Then, if they aren’t claimed and licensed in twenty-four hours, he’s going to—”