What had happened was quite simple. In her rustling advance some wandering trail of the Aunt's black beadiness had caught on the knotted fringe of the table-cloth, and drawn this after her. A mass of silk and lace and ribbon lay sprinkled along the edges of the table where the Tabbies sat; a good store of needles, scissors, and cotton reels mingled with it. Now all this swept to the floor on the moving table-cloth, at the very instant when a rough brownly-black, long-eared person with a sharp nose and very muddy paws bounded into the room, to the full length of his chain. His bound landed him in the very middle of the ribbon-lace-cotton-reel confusion. Judy caught the dog up in her arms, and her apologies would have melted my heart, or yours, dear reader, in an instant. But Tabbies are Tabbies, and a bazaar is a bazaar. No more sewing was done that day; what was left of the afternoon proved all too short for the disentangling, the partial cleansing of the desecrated lace-cotton-reel-silk-muddle. And Alcibiades was tied up in the back-kitchen to the wheel of the patent mangle; he howled without ceasing. "My dear," said the Aunt, when tea was over, and the last Tabby had found her goloshes and gone home in them, "you are most welcome under any roof of mine, but--(may I ask you to close the baize door at the top of the kitchen stairs--thank you--and now this one--I am obliged. One cannot hear oneself speak for that terrible animal)--you must get rid of the cur to-morrow." "Oh, Aunt! he's not a cur--he's pure-bred." "Thank you," said the Aunt, "I believe I am as good a judge of dogs as any lady. My own dear Snubs has only been dead a year and two months last Tuesday. I know that a well-bred dog should have smooth hair, at any rate----" The mother of Snubs had been distantly related to a family of respectable middle-class fox-terriers. "I am very sorry," said Judy. She meant apology, but the Aunt took it for sympathy, and softened somewhat. "A nice little smooth-coated dog now," she said, "a fox-terrier, or an Italian greyhound; you see I am not ignorant of the names of various patterns of dog. I will get you one myself; we will go to the Dogs' Home at Battersea, where really nice dogs are often sold quite cheap. Or perhaps they might take your poor cur in exchange." Judy began to cry. "Yes, cry, my dear," said the Aunt kindly; "it will do you a world of good." When the Aunt was asleep--she had closed her ears to the protests of Alcibiades with wadding left over from a handkerchief sachet--Judy crept down in her woolly white dressing-gown, and coaxed the kitchen fire back to life. Then she sat in front of it, on the speckless rag carpet, and nursed Alcibiades and scolded him, and explained that he really must be a good dog, and that we all have something to put up with in this life.