Inside the door she found Ted, crouched before the fireplace urging Nero to “sic” something.
“Get him, boy!” he was coaxing. “Go-get-him!”
“Get whom?” Nancy asked, in surprise at the spectacle.
“What ever is in that chimney,” the boy replied. “Do you think Nero couldn’t get it as good as that puny little dog of Miss Townsend’s?”
“But how do you know anything is in there?”
“Heard it—it whistles. Besides you said so.” Ted was not a waster of words.
“I never said there was anything there,” Nancy argued. “But what whistled? What did you hear?”
“Just whistlin’. Sic him Nero!” and Ted tried to push the big shaggy head against the old-fashioned fireplace board, that was papered with a very brilliant and hideous set paper piece, the center representing a terrible time among birds that looked like freak chickens.
But Nero was absolutely deaf to Ted’s entreaties. No more would he “go for” the chimney than he went for the food offered him by the solicitous young domestic science students, Nancy and Ruth.
“I don’t think you should keep that big—untidy dog in here, Ted,” remonstrated Nancy, who hesitated over calling Nero “dirty” and felt foolish at calling him “untidy.” She crossed to the corner of the store and raised a window. “You know,” she continued, “this is a cooking school and everything has to be strictly sanitary.”