"Yes, Blossom," said Mr. Pottle, meekly.
She beamed.
"Well, dear, what kind of a dog shall we get?" she asked briskly. He felt that all was lost.
"There are dogs and dogs," he said moodily. "And I don't know anything about any of them."
"I'll read what it says here," she said. Mrs. Pottle was pursuing culture through the encyclopedia, and felt that she would overtake it on almost any page now.
"Dog," she read, "is the English generic term for the quadruped of the domesticated variety of canis."
"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed her husband. "Is that a fact?"
"Be serious, Ambrose, please. The choice of a dog is no jesting matter," she rebuked him, and then read on, "In the Old and New Testaments the dog is spoken of almost with abhorrence; indeed, it ranks among the unclean beasts——"
"There, Blossom," cried Mr. Pottle, clutching at a straw, "what did I tell you? Would you fly in the face of the Good Book?"
She did not deign to reply verbally; she looked refrigerators at him.