made every effort to keep her contented. It was a long steep
climb up from the hollow, so he allowed her to come in a taxi and
charge it to his account. Then, on condition that she would come
on Saturdays also, to help him clean up for Sunday, he allowed
her, on that day, to bring her own children too, and all the
puppies played riotously together around the place. But this he
presently discontinued, for the clamour became so deafening that
the neighbours complained. Besides, the young Spaniels, who were
a little older, got Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers into noisy and
careless habits of speech.

He was anxious that they should grow up refined, and was
distressed by little Shaggy Spaniel having brought up the Comic
Section of a Sunday paper. With childhood's instinctive taste for
primitive effects, the puppies fell in love with the coloured
cartoons, and badgered him continually for "funny papers."

There is a great deal more to think about in raising children (he
said to himself) than is intimated in Dr. Holt's book on Care and
Feeding. Even in matters that he had always taken for granted,
such as fairy tales, he found perplexity. After supper--(he now
joined the children in their evening bread and milk, for after
cooking them a hearty lunch of meat and gravy and potatoes and
peas and the endless spinach and carrots that the doctors advise,
to say nothing of the prunes, he had no energy to prepare a
special dinner for himself)--after supper it was his habit to
read to them, hoping to give their imaginations a little exercise
before they went to bed. He was startled to find that Grimm and
Hans Andersen, which he had considered as authentic classics for
childhood, were full of very strong stuff--morbid sentiment,