"Oh, _I'll_ be a little dog," replied Philip, entering agreeably into the idea, and backing up to be chained. "No, I'll be a big dog. I'll run around an' jerk my chain an' say 'Woof! Woof!' like the Hewitts' setter. And Foxy 'n I'll have bones together!" His small Velásquez face lighted rapturously at the prospect. "Here, Foxy, Foxy!" The black French bull whose chain Philip was using dashed up at the summons. He was middle-aged, but he had a young heart still, and his tail vibrated madly as he bounded between Phyllis and her son. "Oh, he's _got_ a bone!" exclaimed Philip, gleefully dropping on all fours. Phyllis stood up from chaining her child, and turned appealingly to her husband, coming down the steps of the little bungalow with two-and-a-half-year-old Angela on his shoulder. "You look like a colored illustration from the _Graphic_," she said irrelevantly. "You're just in time to assist discipline. _Look!_" she pointed tragically to her victim. He would have been happily disputing the opportune bone with Foxy, had not that faithful animal's devotion led him to hand it over at once. "Faver, make him take it away from me!" he demanded. "Faver, I'm all chained up! I'm a little dog!" Little Angela, who looked like a slim, tiny Christmas-card _Christ-kind_, and was as fascinating a little demon as ever coquetted with the world at large, struggled to get down, and demanded to be chained up and be another little dog. Her father set her down, whereat she made a bolt for the dog, the bone, and her happily engaged brother. "Do you think there's any way of conveying to him that this is not a new amusement, Allan?" demanded his mother, half-laughing. "Don't let's try," said Allan promptly. "Everything's going beautifully. Philip's happy, and Angela's going to be gloriously dirty in a minute, which will give her nurse something to wash. You know how bitter Viola is about never getting the children to herself for a minute." Phyllis slipped an arm through her tall husband's, as they stood by the steps together. "No, but Allan, what _would_ you do?" Allan laughed. "Send him back to Wallraven, and tell Johnny Hewitt to see that he's plunged into the middle of the chickenpox epidemic we fled from. How would you like that, young man?" Philip looked up with deprecating politeness, on being directly addressed. "Please, Faver, if you don't mind my name's Jinks! You must say, 'Here, Jinks,' and I say 'Woof! Woof!' and wag my tail." "Say wuff!" echoed Angela, with a dazzling smile at her elders, and an effort not to tumble over on the grass. Phyllis pounced on her babies at Allan's alarming suggestion, and managed to hug them both at once; an ordeal which Philip stood with every evidence of pleasure, and Angela under protest. "My poor little lambs! ... Allan, this is the first chickenpox they've had up there since the summer we came. We'd been married a month or so, and you weren't quite sure whether you liked me or not. Do you remember?"