Two important members of the Barnes family were a large yellow cat and a small, tangle-haired, blue-gray mop of a Skye terrier. At the first glimpse of the Pup, the yellow cat had fled, with tail as big as a bottle-brush, to the top of the kitchen dresser, where she crouched growling, with eyes like green full moons. The terrier, on the other hand, whose name was Toby, had shown himself rather hospitable to the mild-eyed stranger. Unacquainted with fear, and always inclined to be scornful of whatever conduct the yellow cat might indulge in, he had approached the newcomer with a friendly wagging of his long-haired stump of a tail, and sniffed at him with pleased curiosity. The Pup, his lonely heart hungering for comradeship, had met this civil advance with effusion; and thenceforward the two were fast friends. By the time the yellow cat and Mrs. Barnes had both got over regarding the Pup as a stranger, he had become an object of rather distant interest to them. When he played at wrestling matches with Toby in the yard,--which always ended by the Pup rolling indulgently on his back, while Toby, with yelps of excitement, mounted triumphantly between his fanning flippers,--the yellow cat would crouch upon the woodpile close by and regard the proceedings with intent but non-committal eye. Mrs. Barnes, for her part, would open the kitchen door and surreptitiously coax the Pup in, with the lure of a dish of warm milk, which he loved extravagantly. Then--this being while Libby was at school and Captain Ephraim away on the water--she would seat herself in the rocking-chair by the window with her knitting and watch the Pup and Toby at their play. The young seal was an endless source of speculation to her. "To think, now," she would mutter to herself, "that I'd be a-settin' here day after day a-studyin' out a critter like that, what's no more'n jest plain _fish_ says I, if he _do_ flop roun' the house an' drink milk like a cat. He's right uncanny; but there ain't no denyin' but what he's as good as a circus when he gits to playin' with Toby." As Mrs. Barnes had a very good opinion of Toby's intelligence, declaring him to be the smartest dog in Maine, she gradually imbibed a certain degree of respect for Toby's friend. And so it came about that the Pup acquired a taste which no seal was ever intended to acquire--a taste for the luxurious glow of the kitchen fire.