“The doctor was always kind to me, but at times his attentions were quite marked. He often kept me in a little room by myself for days and days at a time. He fed me with his own hand, and was very careful of my health. He took my temperature and pulse, and looked at my tongue twice a day. Sometimes he put a little needle in my back and seemed to be squirting something under the skin. It didn’t hurt much, but I felt mighty funny a little while afterward. Queer, wasn’t it?” Fido, who had had diphtheria once and was up on toxins, smiled rather pityingly and said, dryly, “Rather.” “I never doubted the doctor’s honesty of purpose but once. There was a little room just off the library that he called the laboratory. He used to shut himself up in that little closet--that’s about all it was--for hours at a time. Now it wasn’t any of my business, but I couldn’t help being curious to know what he was doing in that little den. Then, too, I was certain that I smelled nice fresh meat just as he came out one day. Of course that completely demoralized me and I determined to look into the matter. Ah me! why did I not remember that old story about Bluebeard? “Well, I watched my chance, and one night when the doctor had his back turned I sneaked into the laboratory, the door of which was slightly ajar. Noticing that he had left the door open, the doctor came back and closed and locked it, leaving me a prisoner. I was not frightened, however, for I was sure the doctor would soon be at work in the laboratory again and give me an opportunity to escape. I chuckled to myself, wretch that I was, to think that my curiosity was at last to be gratified. “Jumping upon the table that the doctor used as a work bench, I saw a sight that froze the very whiskers on my cheeks! There, spread out upon the table lay the ghastly, mangled, lifeless body of a cat whom I recognized as one of my best friends! I fell in a dead faint.” “Sort of a cataleptic fit--eh, Tommy?” said Fido, with a sly, humorous twinkle in his eye. Tommy disdained to answer, and continued: “How long I lay in my swoon I do not know. When I awoke, the doctor was standing over me and saying-- “‘I wonder how the devil that blamed cat got in here! He seems to be sick.’ “Sick? Ye Gods! I should think I was sick! “I never became quite reconciled to the doctor after that, and when, some time afterward, he forbade the children to kiss and hug me any more just because I ate some pickled stuff that stood on a shelf in his office, I actually grew to dislike him. “But everybody else loved the doctor, and I have sometimes thought that perhaps I didn’t quite understand him. He was certainly good and kind to everybody about him.