“Have you seen him get his second dinner?”
“Not even his first!”
“You haven’t? How odd!” Bonny-Gay shook out her skirts and proceeded to enlighten her comrade’s ignorance. She took it for granted, or she had done so, that he knew as much about things as she herself; but if not, why, there was a deal to tell. Max’s history first. She began by declaring:
“He’s the smartest dog in the world. Everybody knows that. He’s lived in the Place nine years. That’s one year longer than I have. All the children’s big brothers and sisters have played with him, same’s we do now. He never lets a tramp come near. He never steps on a flower bed or lets us. If we forget and go on the grass he barks us off. He gets his first dinner at our house. When the clocks strike twelve he goes to the gardener and gets his basket. Then he walks to our back entrance, puts the basket down, stands up on his hind feet and pushes his nose against the ’lectric bell. That rings up the cook and—she’s a man just now—he—she takes the basket and puts in some food. Then Max walks down that side street, about a square, and sits on the curb to eat it. ‘Just like a beggar,’ the gardener says, ‘’cause he likes to feed his own dog his own self.’ I would, too, wouldn’t you?”
“If I owned the ‘smartest dog in the whole world’ I presume I should.”
“Max feels ashamed of it, too; don’t you, dear?”
The dog replied by dropping his black head from Bonny-Gay’s shoulder to the ground and by blinking in a deprecating way from that lowly position.
“Then, in a few minutes, he comes back to the gardener with the empty basket and stands and wags his tail as if he were the hungriest dog that ever was. Then the keeper says: ‘Yes. You may go, Max!’ And off he trots, away down the other way, to some place where his master lives and gets a second basket full. That he brings back here, and the man puts a paper on the ground under the bushes and he eats again. Just like folks to their own table, that time; don’t you, Max Doggie, smart doggie!”
The handsome animal shook his wavy fleece and sprang up, ready for a frolic and evidently aware that he had been the subject of discussion.
“No, not yet, sir. The best thing hasn’t been told. Listen, please, Mr.——”