“If you could only have seen yourself, you would have died with laughter. You looked so comical all hunched up riding on that dog’s back.”
“And so would you have been hunched up if you had been trying to stick on, not by the skin of your teeth but by your claws which kept slipping. I knew if I let go I should have a terrible tumble.”
“Here come the people out of the back of that theater, looking for you. We better be going,” said Billy. And so the three trotted down the alley until they came to a cross street. They had gone but a little way down this street when they came to a grocery store.
“I think I shall leave you fellows here and go on and see if I cannot find something to eat to my liking,” said Stubby. “Where shall we meet when it is time to go home, and at what time shall we meet?”
“At the crossroads at the edge of town, around six o’clock,” replied Billy. “What are you two going to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just walk along and see what turns up,” said Stubby.
“And you, Button?”
“Tag along with you, Billy, until I think of something I should like to do.”
“So long then, until we meet again!”
Stubby ran through the side door of the grocery and found himself in a kind of store room and shipping room combined, as there were shelves full of canned goods, boxes of crackers and breakfast foods, while on the floor were baskets of groceries ready to be delivered. All around the room next to the wall were ranged barrels of molasses, kerosene, vinegar and such things.