Charlie and His Puppy Bingo

by Helen Hill; Violet Maxwell

Soon he heard the front door open and he heard Charlie’s voice in the hall. Charlie and his Mother and his Auntie had come home.

Charlie said, “Oh, Mother, look at those funny white tracks all along the floor. What do you think they can be?”

His Mother and his Auntie looked, and they said, “How extraordinary! They look like Bingo’s footprints. I wonder what he can have been up to.”

Then Bingo himself came running out into the hall to meet Charlie. He had forgotten his troubles and he jumped up in the air and barked, “Yap, yap, yap,” he was so glad that Charlie had come home again. But when Charlie saw Bingo, he called out in amazement, “Mother, Auntie, look! What has happened to Bingo! He has lost his spots!”

And it was true. Bingo had lost all his spots! He had lost the black spot on his head, and the ones on his ears, and the big black spot on his back, and the little black spot on the end of his stumpy tail! Yes, Bingo was now white all over without a particle of black anywhere.

“What have you done to yourself?” said Charlie as he picked him up. Bingo tried to tell him all about it, as he wriggled and barked and tried to lick Charlie’s face. And—lo and behold! the black spots began to show again, first the one on Bingo’s head, then the ones on his ears, then the big one on his back, and last of all the little one on his tail. But now it was Charlie who was white—yes, he was white all down the front of his coat!

Then Charlie and his Mother and his Auntie followed Bingo’s little white tracks to where they came from. They wanted to discover what in the world Bingo had been doing to get himself white all over. Yes, they followed the tracks all the way to the kitchen, and there they found the tin of flour lying on the floor near the dresser—and then they knew what Bingo had been doing while they were out.

Oh, how Charlie and his Mother and his Auntie did laugh at the idea of poor, fat, little Bingo trying to climb up on the kitchen dresser, and knocking the tin of flour all over himself! But they were sorry for Bingo, too, because they knew how it must have frightened him.

So Charlie’s Auntie found Bingo’s brush, and she took him out into the back yard and brushed all the rest of the flour off him—all that wasn’t on the carpet or the kitchen floor or on Charlie’s coat! And Charlie’s Mother swept up the flour in the kitchen, and swept the tracks on the living-room carpet, and she gave Charlie a whisk broom to brush off the front of his coat. And then she went to the ice box and got a little bone, and she gave it to Bingo to comfort him.

So Bingo was happy again after all his troubles—but never again did he try to climb up on high pieces of furniture, no matter how perky Topsy looked at him and tried to egg him on. No, Bingo was a wise little dog now, and when Topsy climbed up on the mantelpiece and looked down at him, tossing his head as much as to say, “Don’t you wish you could climb like me?” Bingo would jump in the air and bark, “Yap, yap!” Then he would stand up on his hind legs and beg—and that was one thing that Topsy did not know how to do!