II.
Mr. Kent Maclin took his hat and stick and started for his customary after-dinner stroll. On the front porch he found a small, brown dog busily engaged in reducing the doormat to a pulp.
Mr. Maclin recognized the dog as one belonging to the next door neighbor; he had seen him earlier in the day digging in a bed of scarlet geraniums. If people would keep dogs, Mr. Maclin thought they ought at least to teach them to behave. Still, if the lady who owned the dog could stand it to have her flower beds ruined, Mr. Maclin supposed he ought not to mind a chewed-up doormat.
The dog was only a puppy, anyway. His manners would probably improve as he grew older. Mr. Maclin stooped and patted him kindly on the head. The stubby brown tail thumped the floor ecstatically, and a red tongue shot out and began licking the polish from Mr. Maclin’s shoes.
“Jolly little beggar, aren’t you?” said the gentleman. But he backed hastily away from the moist, red tongue.
III.
Mr. Maclin ordered a new doormat every three days, and kept a package of dog biscuits in the drawer of the library table. He dealt these out with a lavish hand whenever the little brown dog saw fit to call for them, and was not without hope that a cultivated taste for dog biscuit might in time replace a natural one for doormats.
Mr. Maclin would have been glad to make the acquaintance of the supposed owner of the little brown dog, but didn’t quite know how to go about it.
But one day, as he watched the little brown dog digging as usual in the geranium bed, he had an inspiration.
He paid a visit to the florist, and came back with a long pasteboard box tucked under his arm. It was filled with a glowing mass of red geraniums.