As Zip was still in a ball and could not extricate himself, the same boy who had carried him to the bathroom before, put the apron around him again and took him back upstairs.
This time they got him in the tub safely and began to turn the water in. The tub was slippery, and so was the candy, and as the water crept up to where Zip was tied, not hand and foot, but worse still, head, nose, ears and all four legs as well as tail, he howled and howled until one could have heard him a block away. He was so afraid of being drowned before the water would soak off the candy and when the children tried to pull it off it nearly killed him with pain, for it took all the little fine hairs of his coat with it.
The window of the bathroom was open and the doctor, coming out on his front porch to look at the sky before retiring, heard Zip howling somewhere across the street. He was crying in such a pitiful, frightened manner that the doctor knew he must be fast somewhere or hurt so he could not get home. Consequently he hurried across the street to see where his pet was, with the worried Tabby close at his heels.
The doctor made the circuit of the house and stable yard but could find no Zip. The howls seemed to come from up in the air somewhere as from the top of the house, so finally the doctor rapped on the Hardway kitchen door to ask the maid if Zip had not slipped in the house and gotten up on the roof. He knocked repeatedly but no one answered. As he still heard Zip howling and several people were talking all at once, he made bold to open the door and step in. What he saw you already know. As by this time the children had started to bathe Zip, the doctor was told to go right upstairs. When he appeared in the door all the children stopped laughing and stepped back to give him a chance to see Zip.
And this is what he saw.
Just one of Zip's eyes stuck out of a hole where the candy had dropped off, and his poor little tail stuck out like a handle on the other side of the ball. That was all that could be seen of Zip at that moment, for in his numerous rolls, the candy had spread all over him until he was no longer a dog with legs but just one round ball of molasses candy.
Seeing the water was fast climbing up to where it would reach Zip's mouth, and knowing it would drown him, the doctor turned off the spigot. The children had never thought that the poor dog could not move his head to keep out of the water. Now the doctor hurriedly took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and in a jiffy had Zip and the molasses ball in his hands and was holding it so that the water could not get to Zip's head. Then with one hand he gently threw the water upon the candy until it began to loosen and fall off. First he released the little dog's head, which had been bent down between his fore legs. As the candy began to loosen and drop off, first one black ear stood up and then the other, and last the little legs began to shoot out. All this made the children laugh to see what appeared to be a big ball of candy develop into a little dog. At last when Zip was entirely clean and had been wrapped in a big bath towel to dry, Doctor Elsworth apologized to Helen for his little dog spoiling her candy pull. But she declared that he had given them more fun than if he had not come over, and the molasses had cooled and they had had a regular candy pull.
But when it came to apologizing to Mrs. Hardway for the mess Zip had caused in the kitchen, the doctor did not know what to say, he felt so badly about it. But he could have saved himself all the worry, for Mrs. Hardway was a sensible woman and knew that accidents will happen, and she met with the doctor smilingly. Besides, the doctor had been her family physician for years, and they were all very, very fond of him as well as of Zip. It was hard to think of the doctor without Zip, as they were always together. So when the doctor began to apologize, Mrs. Hardway stopped him short, and told him to drink Zip's health in a glass of freshly made lemonade, and say no more about it. The doctor, thanking her from the bottom of his heart, drank not to Zip's health, but to hers, and thus the exciting evening ended peacefully and everyone was happy, including Zip, as the doctor gave him all the Maraschino cherries in his glass, something he dearly loved, though you may think it was a queer thing for a little dog to like.