“You needn’t go out of your way to get hot telling me that,” he retorted. “You haven’t the slick repose of manner of the Southern dog.”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve struck a four-legged Sherlock Holmes,” I remarked good-naturedly. “You’re just the fellow to tell me where to go to get a square meal.”
“Why don’t you trot uptown for your first feed?” he asked with a relaxing of his sour expression, for he liked being compared to the famous detective.
I smiled. There was no need to say anything, yet I said it. “Uptown’s fine, after you have an introduction. Downtown doesn’t ask so many questions.”
“Ha! Ha!” he laughed gruffly. “I like you. Come right in—I’ll share bones and tit-bits with you for a night. Follow me,” and he shuffled round the corner toward the family entrance of the saloon. There he pushed his flat skull against a door in the wall, and entered a yard about as big as a pocket handkerchief.
“Not many yards in the Bowery now,” he said hoarsely. “Happened to be a fire next door that burnt a building to the ground, and fencing in the vacant lot, gives us a place to stretch our legs.”
“Good gracious!” I said. “The city is getting darker and darker.”
“Yes,” he replied gloomily, “what with burrowing for the subways, and sky-rocketing for the elevateds, and tunnelling for the tubes, the city is getting to be as black as——”
“Yes, yes,” I said hastily. “I know—it’s a habitation not mentioned in polite dog circles.”
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked in his choked voice. “If you’re too good for your company, get out.”