We dined in the rathskeller, the walls of which were completely covered with long churchwarden pipes, arranged in the most intricate and marvelous patterns; and after our mutton-chop and ale and plum pudding, we filled with the choicest of tobaccos the pipes which the old major-domo brought us. Then came Jacob R. Enderby to smoke with us. Tall and spare he was, with long, straight, black hair, large, aquiline nose, and piercing eyes. I disgraced myself by staring at him. I didn’t know that such a man existed in New York, and yet I couldn’t decide whether his habitat should be Arizona or Cape Cod. Enderby and Uncle Ford were deep in a discussion of the statesmanship of James G. Blaine, when a waiter summoned my uncle to the telephone. I neglected to state that my uncle, in his prosaic hours, is a physician; and this was a call. I knew it the moment I saw the waiter approaching. I was disappointed and disgusted. Uncle Ford saw this and laughed. “Cheer up!” said he. “You needn’t come with me to visit the sick. I’ll be back in an hour, and meanwhile Mr. Enderby will take care of you; won’t you, Jake?” For answer Enderby arose, and refilling his pipe took me by the arm, while my uncle got into his overcoat. As he passed us on the way out he whispered in my ear: “Talk about dogs.” I heard and nodded. Enderby led me to the lounge or loafing-room, an oak-paneled apartment in the rear of the floor above, with huge leather chairs and a seat in the bay window. Save for a gray-haired old chap dozing over a copy of _Simplicissimus_, the room was deserted. But no sooner had Enderby seated himself on the window-seat than there was a rush and a commotion, and a short, glad bark, and Nubbins, the steward’s bull-terrier, bounded in and landed at Enderby’s side with canine expressions of great joy. I reached forward to pat him, but he paid absolutely no attention to me. At last his wriggling subsided, and he settled down with his head on Enderby’s knee, the picture of content. Then I recalled my uncle’s parting injunction. “Friend of yours?” I suggested. Enderby smiled. “Yes,” he said, “we’re friends, I guess. And the funny part of it is that he doesn’t pay any attention to any one else except his master. They all act that way with me, dogs do.” And he pulled Nubbins’s stubby ears. “Natural attraction, I suppose,” said I. “Yes, it is,” he answered, with the modest frankness of a big man. “It’s a thing hard to explain, though there’s a sort of reason for it in my case.” I pushed toward him a little tobacco-laden teak-wood stand hopefully. He refilled and lighted.