"The wolfhound's doing fine, ma'am," the messenger answered in response to her questions. "Like a different dog already. All he needed was exercise and a little society. Yes'm, this pup's broken--in a manner, that is. Your man picked you out the best-tempered little feller in the litter. Here, Foxy--careful, lady! Hold on to his leash!" There was the passage of the check, a few directions about dog-biscuits, and then the messenger from the kennels drove back to the station, the crate, which had been emptied of a wriggling six-months black bull-dog, on the seat beside him. XII Allan, lying at the window of the sunny bedroom, and wondering if they had been having springs like this all the time he had lived in the city, heard a scuffle outside the door. His wife's voice inquired breathlessly of Wallis, "Can Mr. Allan--see me?... Oh, gracious--_don't_, Foxy, you little black gargoyle! Open the door, or--shut it--quick, Wallis!" But the door, owing to circumstances over which nobody but the black dog had any control, flew violently open here, and Allan had a flying vision of his wife, flushed, laughing, and badly mussed, being railroaded across the room by a prancingly exuberant French bull at the end of a leash. "He's--he's a cheerful dog," panted Phyllis, trying to bring Foxy to anchor near Allan, "and I don't think he knows how to keep still long enough to pose across your feet--he wouldn't become them anyhow--he's a real man-dog, Allan, not an interior decoration.... Oh, Wallis, he has Mr. Allan's slipper! Foxy, you little fraud! Did him want a drink, angel-puppy?" "Did you get him for me, Phyllis?" asked Allan when the tumult and the shouting had died, and the caracoling Foxy had buried his hideous little black pansy-face in a costly Belleek dish of water. "Yes," gasped Phyllis from her favorite seat, the floor; "but you needn't keep him unless you want to. I can keep him where you'll never see him--can't I, honey-dog-gums? Only I thought he'd be company for you, and don't you think he seems--cheerful?" Allan threw his picturesque head back on the cushions, and laughed and laughed. "Cheerful!" he said. "Most assuredly! Why--thank you, ever so much, Phyllis. You're an awfully thoughtful girl. I always did like bulls--had one in college, a Nelson. Come here, you little rascal!" He whistled, and the puppy lifted its muzzle from the water, made a dripping dash to the couch, and scrambled up over Allan as if they had owned each other since birth. Never was a dog less weighed down by the glories of ancestry. Allan pulled the flopping bat-ears with his most useful hand, and asked with interest, "Why on earth did they call a French bull Foxy?" "Yes, sir," said Wallis. "I understand, sir, that he was the most active and playful of the litter, and chewed up all his brothers' ears, sir. And the kennel people thought it was so clever that they called him Foxy."