Well, the next thing was, after I got my two club cakes both provided for, that it turned out Mr. Dombledon was an agent, selling “notions, knick-knacks and anything o’ that,” he told me; and he use’ to start out at seven o’clock in the morning, with his satchel in one hand and his little boy, more or less, in the other. “Land,” says I to him after a few days, “don’t your little boy get wore to the bone tramping around with you like that?” “Some,” says he; “but I carry him part of the way.” “Carry him?” says I, “and tote that heavy knick-knack notion satchel?” “Well,” says he, “I don’t mind it. What I’m always thinking is this: What if I didn’t have him to tote.” “True enough,” says I, and couldn’t say another word. But of course the upstart and offshoot of that was that before the week was out, I’d invited Mr. Dombledon to leave the little fellow with me, some days, while he went off. And he done so, grateful, but making a curious provision. “It’d be grand for him,” says he; “they’s only just one thing: Would--would you promise not to leave him hear anybody say anything anyways cross?” “Well,” says I, judicious, “I donno’s I’m what-you-might-say cross. Not systematic. But--I might be a little crispy.” “I ain’t afraid o’ you,” says he, real flattering. “But don’t leave him hear anybody--well, snap anybody up.” “All right,” says I, “I won’t. I like,” I says, “to get out o’ the way of that myself.” “Well, and then,” he says, “I guess you’ll think I’m real particular. But--would you promise not to leave him go outside the yard?” “Sure,” says I, “only when I’m with him.” “I guess you’ll think I’m real particular,” he says again, in his kind of gentle voice without any sizin’ to it, “but I mean not even then. Days when you’re goin’ out, I’ll take him with me.” “Sure,” says I, wondering all over me, but not letting on all I wondered, like you can’t in society. And I actually looked forward to having the little thing around the house with me, me that has always been down on mice, moths, bats and boys. The next thing was, Would he stay with me? And looking to this end I contrived, some skillful, to be baking cookies the first morning his pa went off. Mis’ Puppy had happened in early to get some blueing, and she was sitting at one end of my cook table when Donnie came trotting out with his father, that always preferred the back door. (“It feels more like I lived here,” says he, wishful, “if you let me come in the back door.” And I was the last one to deny him that. Once when I went visiting, I got so homesick to go in the back door that it was half my reason for leaving ’em.) “Now then,” I says to the little fellow that morning, “you just set here with us and see me make cookies. I’ll cut you out a soldier cooky,” says I.