We went along a hall and into a big bright room that smelled of food. Some people were sitting at the table eating—two of them. There was the man I had seen the night before and a lady. The boy called her mother.
“Look, mother!” he said. “Isn’t he a cunning little fellow? Mayn’t I keep him? Please say I may.”
“Oh, Tommy!” said the lady. And then I didn’t hear her say anything else, because two little dogs rushed out from under the table and began barking at me. They were the very same dogs that had chased me out of the basement the night before. There was another little dog, and she barked, too, but she stayed under the table.
The dogs came at me and I thought they were going to jump on me, so I barked and showed my teeth, but Tommy drove them away, and the lady called to them and hit at them with a white cloth she had in her lap.
The gentleman said, “Take him away, Tommy. Shut him up somewhere until after breakfast.”
So I was taken downstairs again and shut up in the same room where I had been before, but the boy brought me some breakfast,—all I could eat, so I didn’t mind.
I did hope I was going to stay and not be sent away, and that I could be Tommy’s dog and not have to go back to the O’Gradys’. I loved that boy and he loved me, and I wanted to be his dog.
And so I was. Somehow I had been afraid the lady would send me away, but she didn’t; not just then, anyway. I stayed and stayed, for days and days and days and days.
The lady didn’t like me much, and the dogs didn’t like me at all.
