"Please, please," she cried, "please don't be silly. Why do you keep making noises like that instead of giving me a proper answer?"
"Missy," he explained, "I'm a comic policeman. I'm not here to tell folk the way or to lock them up, or anything of that kind; I'm here to make people laugh."
"You are not amusing me!"
"Not when I make a noise like a dog?" he asked, with surprise. "Why, that nearly always sends people into a good temper. You wait till I give you my imitation of a railway engine. Hark!"
He set his teeth together and began to say "Isha—isha—isha," but the little girl turned away. She felt so indignant that she determined to tell her father about it at the very first opportunity, and see whether something could not be done. More than once her father had helped to straighten out tangled matters by simply writing a letter to the newspapers, and signing himself "An Indignant Ratepayer."
And at the very moment along came her father. He, too, walked on all fours as other people did, and the little girl thought it caused him to look particularly undignified, but she did not trouble about this, for, stout as he was, she was really glad to see him.
"How do you do," he said respectfully. "Can you give me a penny to buy some sweeties?"
"Daddie, dear!" she cried with distress. "Don't you begin to be funny, please."
"I'm not," he said.