Baron was the queerest-looking small creature, an English pug with a fawn-colored body, and a knotted-up, wrinkled, sooty little visage expressive of the greatest contempt and ill-nature—a visage that greatly belied him, for he was the gentlest of all dogs.
At the word "over," he leaped to the top of the half-door, and thence into the yard.
"Well done, you little hero!" cried Dick.
Queenie and Rosie, a pair of tiny Yorkshires, and Snap, a black-and-tan, who "could kill forty rats in a minute," were next introduced. Dick thought the latter almost equal to Pepper, who, by-the-way, never killed any.
"Now, come out-doors, gentlemen, and look at our other boarders before supper-time," said the Doctor.
In an instant Mr. Hayes and the boys were surrounded by dogs great and small. A fine blood-hound thrust its cold nose against Harry's cheek, a red Irish setter licked his hand, and a pair of white bull-dogs, by clumsy antics and friendly nudgings, tried to make his acquaintance, while a number of bull-terriers, Newfoundland, and pointer pups engaged in a rough-and-tumble play that was very amusing.
In a shed at one corner of the yard the boys spied a young man preparing the dogs' supper. Dick whispered, "There'll be fun by-and-by."
The boys had just time, after they examined two or three families of terrier puppies, to peep between the bars at two very distinguished boarders who had recently arrived from Europe—an English mastiff and a Scotch collie or shepherd dog—who had separate apartments and dined alone, when supper was announced by a long, shrill whistle.
"Now they'll fight," said Dick, in a tone of expectation; but he was mistaken.
The dogs marched to supper like a company of soldiers. Two lads presided over the tubs and troughs from which the larger ones ate, while a young woman fed the smaller ones daintier fare from earthen dishes.