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190 "though to my mind they yaps far more aggravatin'. It's the cocker spannel and the Great Danes upsets them."

"The cocker spannel has got rather a persevering bark," said Dickie, looking up at the creeping-jenny in the window-boxes. No flowers would grow in the garden, now trampled hard by the indiarubber-soled feet of many dogs; but Dickie did his best with window-boxes, and every window was underlined by a bright dash of colour—creeping-jenny, Brompton stocks, stone-crop, and late tulips, and all bought from the barrows in the High Street, made a brave show.

"I don't say as they're actin' unneighbourly in talking about the pleece, so long as they don't do no more than talk," said Beale, with studded fairness and moderation. "What I do say is, I wish we 'ad more elbow-room for 'em. An' as for exercisin' of 'em all every day, like the books say—well, 'ow's one pair of 'ands to do it, let alone legs, and you in another line of business and not able to give yer time to 'em?"

"I wish we had a bigger place, too," said Dickie; "we could afford one now. Not but what I should be sorry to leave the old place, too. We've 'ad some good times here in our time, farver, ain't us?" He sighed with the air of an old man looking back on the long-ago days of youth."

"You lay to it we 'as," said Mr. Beale; "but this 'ere back-yard, it ain't a place where dogs can what you call exercise, not to call it exercise. Now is it?"