"But we never thought where the dogs might be getting all these things they brought us. The truth is, we didn't bother very much, I'm afraid. Anyway at the end of our first week of brisk trade we noticed a great many people going through the streets as though they were looking for something. And presently these people, seeing our shop in the empty lot, gathered around us, talking to one another. And while they were talking a retriever came up to me with a gold watch and chain in his mouth, which he wanted to exchange for a ham bone.
"A retriever came up with a gold watch and chain"
"Well, you should have seen the excitement among the people then! The owner of the watch and chain was there and he raised a terrible row. And then it came out that these dogs had been taking things from their masters' homes to hire bones with. The people were dreadfully annoyed. They closed up our bone shop and put us out of business. But they never discovered that the money we had made had gone to the beggar.
"Of course, we hadn't made enough to keep him in comfort for long and very soon he had to become a pavement artist again and was as badly off as he had ever been—and the pictures he drew were worse, if anything, than before.
"Now it happened one day, when I was wandering around in the country outside the town, that I met a most conceited spaniel. He passed me with his nose turned up in the air in such a cheeky manner that I said to him, I said: 'What makes you so stuck up?'
"'My master has been ordered to paint the portrait of a prince,' he said, putting on no end of elegance.