“I did not!” said Leroy, indignantly. “And that’s not the dog, Mr. Anderson. I can see him out the window. He’s a police dog, and my dog was a little one.”
They proceeded to the next house. Nobody came to the door at all. There was only one more house left on the street.
“Well, I hope the right dog’s in there,” said Leroy, “but—” He paused, then he laid his hand on Anderson’s sleeve. “Most any lil dog would do,” he said, very low, “for her.”
Mr. Anderson was about to protest sternly against such a dishonest and immoral suggestion, but somehow he didn’t. The child’s hand looked so very small, and his manner was so trusting. He said nothing at all, simply walked up the path to this last house.
He rang the bell, and the door was opened with startling suddenness by a little man with spectacles and a neatly pointed white beard. He looked like a professor, and he was a professor—of Romance Languages—and because of his scholarly unworldliness, he had been cheated and swindled so many times that he had become fiercely suspicious. He glared.
“This boy has been bitten by a dog,” Mr. Anderson explained. “And we want to find the dog, to see—”
“Ha!” said the little man. “And what has this to do with me, pray?”
“I thought perhaps you had a dog here—”
The professor folded his arms.
“Very well!” said he. “I have. And what of it?”