“Who you got?”
“Got Terry!” exclaimed Toddie. “Got doggie Terry!”
“Ow!” shouted Budge, clapping his hands and dancing about. “That’s the nicest thing I ever heard of! Just won’t we have fun? How did you catch him?”
“Why, he wazh asleep, an’ I dzust tied a skring to his collar, an’ tied de uvver end to a little tree, an’ dere he is. See him?”
The brothers moved towards the dog; the doomed animal, after one frantic tug at his bonds, recognized the inevitable and shrank whimperingly against the tree.
“Poor doggie’s sick, Tod,” said Budge. “We’ll have to play doctor to him an’ make him well. I think he ought to go to bed, don’t you?”
“Yesh,” said Toddie, “an’ have a night-gown on, like we do when we’s sick.”
“That’s so. You run an’ get yours for him. He needs a little one, you know. I guess you’d better take off your shoes, so’ not to disturb Aunt Alice.”
Toddie cast his shoes and vanished, returning speedily with a robe in which the dog Terry, not without much remonstrance, was soon enveloped; after which Budge lifted him tenderly in his arms, saying,—
“His night-gown hangs down an awful lot, I think. We’d better pin up the bottom part, like nurse did for the sister-baby the other day.”