play with, and proceeded to his own toilet.

As he was bathing them, after breakfast, he tried to enlist
Fuji's enthusiasm. "Did you ever see such fat rascals?" he said.
"I wonder if we ought to trim their tails? How pink their
stomachs are, and how pink and delightful between their toes! You
hold these two while I dry the other. No, not that way! Hold them
so you support their spines. A puppy's back is very delicate: you
can't be too careful. We'll have to do things in a
rough-and-ready way until Dr. Holt's book comes. After that we
can be scientific."

Fuji did not seem very keen. Presently, in spite of the rain, he
was dispatched to the village department store to choose three
small cribs and a multitude of safety pins. "Plenty of safety
pins is the idea," said Gissing. "With enough safety pins handy,
children are easy to manage."

As soon as the puppies were bestowed on the porch, in the
sunshine, for their morning nap, he telephoned to the local
paperhanger.

"I want you" (he said) "to come up as soon as you can with some
nice samples of nursery wallpaper. A lively Mother Goose pattern
would do very well." He had already decided to change the spare
room into a nursery. He telephoned the carpenter to make a gate
for the top of the stairs. He was so busy that he did not even
have time to think of his pipe, or the morning paper. At last,
just before lunch, he found a breathing space. He sat down in the
study to rest his legs, and looked for the Times. It was not in