"Oh, Carrie, you don't mean that?" cried the astonished Tabitha. "Really own part of your beautiful pup? What will your father and mother say?"
"They won't care a bit. The dog is all mine to do what I like with, and I like to give you a share of him. Course he will live here, and I will feed him, so papa can tell me what to give him, as pups are very hard to raise properly and it takes someone that knows how to do it. But you can really, truly own half of him."
"What a good girl you are, Carrie!" exclaimed the other part owner, much impressed at Carrie's grand air of knowledge. "If I had a dog all my own, I'm afraid I'd never want to share him with anyone else, except to play with. I'd want to keep all the ownership myself."
"Well, it would be different with you. All the pets you ever have had was a bunny, while I've had a Shetland pony until we came up here on the desert where there isn't anything for him to eat, and a little lamb out on grandma's farm, and two brown hens, and a pair of doves, and three kitties, and this makes the second dog."
"Oh!"
"That's a lot of pets to have one person own, isn't it? But they didn't all belong to me at the same time, and this dog is the best of them all—except the pony. Dear little Arrow is at grandma's house now and when I go back to town to live, if I'm not too big I am to have her again."
"What a cute name for a pony! What are you going to call this pup?"
"I had thought of Ponto, but papa says he will grow up into a big dog, and he thought General would be a nice name."
"I like Ponto best, I believe. It has a grander sound to it than General. And yet—can I name my half of the dog, too?" as a sudden inspiration came to her mind.
"Why—yes—if it fits in with General," a little doubtfully, for Carrie's ideas of beautiful names differed materially from Tabitha's.