The gay-dog business was a late phase in the life of Jo Hertz. He had
been a quite different sort of canine. The staid and harassed brother of
three unwed and selfish sisters is an under dog. The tale of how Jo
Hertz came to be a Loop-hound should not be compressed within the
limits of a short story. It should be told as are the photo plays, with
frequent throwbacks and many cut-ins. To condense twenty-three years of
a man's life into some five or six thousand words requires a verbal
economy amounting to parsimony.

At twenty-seven Jo had been the dutiful, hard-working son (in the
wholesale harness business) of a widowed and gummidging mother, who
called him Joey. If you had looked close you would have seen that now
and then a double wrinkle would appear between Jo's eyes--a wrinkle that
had no business there at twenty-seven. Then Jo's mother died, leaving
him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a
three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a
fixture.

Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously
made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the
living.

"Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls."

"I will, Ma," Jo had choked.

"Joey," and the voice was weaker, "promise me you won't marry till the
girls are all provided for." Then as Joe had hesitated, appalled: "Joey,
it's my dying wish. Promise!"