Presently I came to an open alley gate. I went inside and found a garbage can that smelled of things to eat. I pawed it over and had a fine time hunting among the scraps, but presently a woman came to the door and shouted at me to get out. She had a broom in her hand, and she seemed cross so I ran out into the street again in a hurry. I didn’t even stop to take a bone with me.
A little farther down the street I met another puppy. He was just about my size and we made friends and had a fine play together, but someone opened a door near-by and called to him to come home, and he ran away and left me.
It was growing late now, and getting colder too. The wind was so sharp it made me shiver. It had begun to snow, and it kept snowing harder and harder, and the wind blew the snow in my eyes till I could hardly see where I was going.
I thought I’d better find some place where I could creep in and keep warm until morning, and then maybe I would go home again. I knew Mr. O’Grady would be sorry because I had run away. But then he oughtn’t to have let the men tease me the way they did. And he had laughed when they did it, as though he thought it funny, instead of telling them to stop.
I had come now to a street where all the houses were big and had big windows with lights shining out of them. They all had brown stone steps going up to their front doors. Down under these steps were other doors. These other doors were lower than the street, and had steps going down to them. I found afterwards they were called basement doors, but I didn’t know it then. I thought I would get down in one of these basements and wait there till it stopped snowing. Anyway, I would be out of the wind.
I ran down the first steps I came to and crouched against the door. It wasn’t very warm there, but anyway it was better than being up in the street.
It kept on getting colder and colder, and I felt so lonesome that presently I began to whine.
I’d only been whining a little while when I heard something inside the door snuffing at the crack, and then a low growl.
I put my nose down to the crack and I sniffed, too, and then I could tell by the smell that there was a dog on the other side of the door. I whined again, and then I heard two dogs snuffing at the crack. They both growled in an angry way, and first one and then the other began barking. They barked louder and louder.
Someone inside opened the door right quick before I expected it, and both the dogs came rushing out at me, barking fiercely.