Babiche was so old that she whined at the evening chill; she perpetually teased to be taken back to her comfortable cushion at the foot of her mistress's bed. She was really very amusing when she sat up on her haunches and begged to be carried. For she was so fat that she hated to walk and she was a very spoiled doggy, that wee spaniel! A sort of a dowager queen of a doggy, a nice little old grandma lady of a dog. The gentle yap-yap-yapping that could always be heard beyond the rear wall was from the throats of some score or more of her expensive great-great-great offspring who lived in the stable in tiny stalls with their pedigree cards tacked neatly under their elaborate kennel names. It was a cross to Felice that she was not allowed to go through the small arched doorway at the back of the garden that led to the stable that opened on the narrow cobblestone "Tradespersons' Street." The Major didn't approve of the manners of Zeb Smathers the kennel man, or Zeb's wife Marthy, though he knew there wasn't a pair with their patience and skill to be found for miles around. All the same Felice adored the stable yard and would have dearly loved to climb the narrow stairs up to the low-ceilinged rooms above the stables where Marthy liked to sit. Lean, grizzled old Marthy! There was usually a dog or two in her lap, either a sickly pup or a grieving-eyed mother dog whose babies had been taken away from her. Such tiny creatures, even the mother dogs-- those little Blenheim spaniels! Snub-nosed, round-headed with long silky flopping ears, soft curly coats and feathery tails. Felice liked the yellow and white ones, and always reached for them, but her grandfather coolly "weeded them out," as Zeb expressed it, because the Trenton ideal was a white dog marked with red. Felicia knew when the dogs were going away. They always went the day after the Basket Man came with a pole tied full of oval gilded wicker hampers. Sometimes she, was allowed to stand in the gateway and watch them have their farewell bath, only of course she sniffed uncomfortably when Zeb let brown drops drip into the rinsing water from a fat bottle with a gay red skull and cross-bones on the label. "Scarbolic" was what she understood it to be, she mustn't touch it or she'd "go dead," whatever that was. But she forgot all about the smell as she watched the fluffy doggies drying in the sunny stable yard while Marthy sang vociferously to cheer her own drooping spirits; the silly old woman never could bear the days the dogs went away. And so Felice on her side of the gate could listen rapturously to the throaty drone in which Marthy asked the world "What's this dull town to me? Rob-in's not here--" or warbled heavily "Churry Ripe, Churry Ripe, Who'll buy my churries--" or wailed "Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Where have you been, charming Billy?" It almost made up for not being allowed to go out of the garden.