Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/56



ED, dear," said Miss Laura one day, "I wish you would train Billy to follow and retrieve. He is four months old now, and I shall soon want to take him out in the street."

"Very well, sister," said mischievous Ned; and catching up a stick, he said, "Come out into the garden, dogs."

Though he was brandishing his stick very fiercely, I was not at all afraid of him; and as for Billy, he loved Ned.

The Morris garden was really not a garden, but a large piece of ground with the grass worn bare in many places, a few trees scattered about, and some raspberry and currant bushes along the fence. A lady who knew that Mr. Morris had not a large salary, said one day when she was looking out of the dining-room window, "My dear Mrs. Morris, why don't you have this garden dug up? You could raise your own vegetables. It would be so much cheaper than buying them."

Mrs. Morris laughed in great amusement. "Think of the hens, and cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and above all, the boys that I have. What sort of a garden would there be, and do you think it would be fair to take their playground from them?" 53