“Shall we have tea or make the dogs do their tricks first?” asked Miss Letty, to whom this free and easy sort of dog party was a novel affair, the only previous one she had attended having been at her Aunt Marie’s, upon her own birthday, when Hamlet had been presented to her. At that party the ten dogs, all poodles, brown, white, or black, had a table to themselves, around which they sat upon high chairs, with napkins about their necks, while they were fed with chicken pâtés by the maids of their several owners, and afterward did their tricks for prizes of bonbons. Only imagine Dogtown dogs eating bonbons! The very idea made Miss Letty smile, though she did not know why candy was a forbidden thing in the local dog law, the reason being this. Long before, when Waddles was a half-grown pup, and Diana was Tommy-Anne, and Obi the garden boy, Waddles had one day lingered in the grocery store after his mistress had started for home. The clerk, either for mischief or because he thought the dog might like sweets, threw him a generous square of old-fashioned molasses candy in its wrapping of oiled paper. Waddles at first had played with it as a toy, not thinking it an eatable, knocking it about with his paw, and then throwing it into the air. During this performance he got a taste of the covering, and then holding the bit between his fore paws he proceeded to gnaw the paper off. The sweet taste pleased him, and he tried to nibble the candy, but it resisted his teeth. Being somewhat piqued, he did a fatal thing, he opened his mouth wide and threw the morsel backward, closing his chewing teeth upon it, after the manner of eating refractory bones. Waddles chewed and chewed, but he could neither swallow the candy nor free his jaws from it. Sticky juice ran from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes began to look wild. He tried all the muscular methods of tongue and throat known to dogs that wish to uneat undesirable things, but to no avail. He tried howling, but could not utter a sound, for he was literally tongue-tied.