"Mercy!" said Tom. "I guess you were sorry about that."
"I was, a little," said the Poker. "But after I had been down in the cellar an hour or two I saw a beautiful piece of steak in the ice-box and I ate it all up. It wasn't cooked at all, but being a little dog I liked it all the better for that. Then I drank up a panful of milk and had a lovely time teasing the cat, until the cook came down, when my troubles began. I never knew when I was a boy that Rollo had troubles, but I found out that day that he had. The cook gave me a terrible whipping because I had eaten the steak, and I had hardly recovered from that when Rollo, who was now what I had been, took me up into the nursery and played with me just as I had always played with him. He held me up by the tail; he flicked me with his handkerchief; he harnessed me up to a small cart and made me drag his sisters' doll babies about the room for one whole hour, and then when lunch time came the waitress forgot me and I had to go hungry all the afternoon. Every time I'd try to go into the kitchen the cook would drive me out with a stick for fear I would eat the other things in the cellar—and oh, dear, I had a miserable time of it.
"The worst of it came two or three days later," continued the Poker. "It was Rollo's bath day, and as I was Rollo of course I had to take Rollo's bath, and my, wasn't it awful! I'd rather take a hundred such baths as I had when I was a boy than one like Rollo's. The soap got into my eyes and I couldn't say a word. Then it got into my mouth, and bah! how fearful it was. After that I was grabbed by all four of my legs and soused into the water until I thought I should drown, and rubbed until my fur nearly came off.
"I wished then that I had asked the Fairy to leave her address so that I could send for her and have her come back and let me be a boy again. All the fun of being Rollo was spoiled by the woes that were his to bear—woes I had never dreamed of his having until I took his place.
"I must have been Rollo a month when the Fairy came back one night to see how I was getting along. Rollo lay asleep in my crib, while I was curled up in a dog basket at the foot of it.
"'Well,' said the Fairy as she entered the room, 'how do you both do?'
"'I like it first-rate,' said Rollo. 'Being a boy is ever so much nicer than being a dog.'
"'I think so, too," said I. 'And if you don't mind I'd like to be a boy again.'
"'What boy do you want to be?' she asked.
"'What boy?' said I. 'Why, myself, of course. Who else?'