The Orange Street dogs had their most accustomed meeting-place at a piece of deserted garden just behind the monument at the top of the hill. Here it was shady in hot weather and comfortable and cosy in chill; they were secure from rude boys and tiresome officials, and there was no large house near enough to them for servants to come out and chase them away. It was, it was true, on the whole the second-class dogs who gathered there; Mephisto but seldom put in an appearance, and therefore those sycophants, Flossie and Fritz, hinted that it was a commonplace crowd and beneath them. Moreover, it was never very easy for Mephisto to escape far from his own home, as his master, the colonel, was so proud of him and so nervous of losing him that he could not bear to let him out of his sight. It happened, however, one fine morning, a few days after Christmas, that the colonel was in bed with a catarrh (he was a very hypochondriacal gentleman), and Mephisto, meeting Pompey in the street, they wandered amicably together in the direction of the monument. Mephisto was very ready to show himself in public, having been to the barber’s only the day before. He was inordinately proud of the second tuft at the end of his tail, at the gleaming white circle of hair round his neck, and the more the pink skin showed through in his naked parts the happier he was. He really thought there was not such another dog in the world as himself this fine morning, being a provincial and narrow-minded dog in spite of his French origin. Mephisto and Pompey trotted up Orange Street together, and Flossie, who was always on the look-out from behind her garden railing for the passing of Mephisto, was graciously allowed to join them. She wheezed along with them, puffing herself up and swelling with self-importance. The conversation chanced to turn upon Hamlet. Mephisto said that now that he and Pompey were friends, he would really like to ask him a question that had been often in his mind, and that was how it came about that Pompey could ever have allowed himself such a common, vulgar friend as Hamlet. Pompey replied that he felt that that was a just and fair question for his friend to ask him, and he could only reply that the fellow had seemed at first to have a coarse sort of humour that was diverting for the moment. One tired naturally of the thing very quickly, and the trouble was with these coarse-grained creatures that when you tired of them, having given them a little encouragement at first out of sheer kindness, it was exceedingly difficult to shake them off again. The fellow had seemed lonely, and Pompey had taken pity upon him; he would see to it that it should be a long time before he did such a thing again. Mephisto said that he was glad to hear this. For himself, he had never been able to abide the creature, and he could only trust that he would soon be ridden over by a cart or poisoned by a burglar or thrown into the river by a couple of boys.