Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/97

 you?" cried the little boy. "You'll die if you do not eat." He lifted the dog tenderly into his lap, when—what should he feel on the stomach but a seam! "Nurse," he cried, "come quickly; something is stitched so tight around the poor dog's body he cannot eat nor breathe."

The nurse ran in with the scissors in her hand. And lo!

With a nip and a snip, and snip and a nip, And a very loud pip!

out came the little boy's own little dog.

"Now I see through it all," cried the nurse. And what she saw was what had really happened.

While the little dog was on his way to the little boy, a dog-seller snatched him up and carried him into a shop. There he tried to change him into a French poodle by sewing him into a skin-tight black jacket with curly trimming. But by great good luck it was down the street past this very shop the nurse walked and spied the little dog peeping out to see how he might escape.

"Oh, I'll never forget thee again," cried the little boy. And he didn't. The two lived happy together ever after, and where one went the other followed.

—