"That doesn’t seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in Berrisford’s hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very expensive gloves I had bought two days before. "Heavens!—do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm. "Do you think it will hurt him?" "Of course he ate it. I don’t see it anywhere, and they were both together on that chair. I hope it _will_ hurt him," I said. "It is n’t like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who ’s never been in a house before in all his life," Berrisford muttered resentfully. "Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed. "It isn’t outlandish—it’s Icelandic," Berrisford replied. "He came all the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack. I bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a dollar—didn’t I, my booful Saga; ess he did. And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on de way up—didn’t he, darlin’? And dat horrid baggage man was dess crazy ’tause he did n’t know where to put off any baggage and had to delay de twain like evvysing." Berrisford became quite incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door. I don’t think it’s right for any one man to inflict a whole community with a beast like Saga, and I ’ve told Berrisford so several times; but he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more, than any one. Do you ever hear _me_ complain when he wallows in the mud and then snuggles up in _my_ bed? Was there any outcry when he ate _my_ gloves and _my_ patent leather shoes and _my_ Russia leather notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of ’Paradise Lost’? Did I make a violent scene—the way you and Duggie do every day—when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before the people came—behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten thirty-six perfectly _delicious_ lettuce sandwiches? You might at least admit that you think he ’s just as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to follow you through the Square—with everybody turning to look—you know you do. Does n’t he, _mon tou-tou, mon bébé, mon chien de race_?"