and, coming back with one at last, Mr. Lenox and he drove to the nearest of
the London addresses.

The first was no good at all. The retrievers were all puppies, so gentle
and playful that they would not have frightened even a mouse from the
caravan door. But the next, which was at Bermondsey, was better. Here, in a
small backyard, they found Mr. Amos, the advertiser, surrounded by kennels.
He was a little man with a squint, and he declared that he had nothing but
the best-bred dogs with the longest pedigrees.

"But we don't want anything so swagger as that," said Mr. Lenox.

"We want a watchdog to be kept on a chain, but friendly enough with his own
people. If you keep only pedigree dogs, we may as well get on to our next
address."

Mr. Amos stepped between Mr. Lenox and the door. "It's most extraordinary
odd," he said, " for, although I make it almost a religion never to have
any but pedigree dogs, it happens that just at this very moment I have got,
for the first time in my whole career, an inferior animal. It's not mine.
Oh, no; I'm only taking care of it for a friend. But it's a retriever all
right, and a good one, mark you, though not a pedigree dog. My friend wants
a good home for it. He's very particular about that. Kind, nice people, you
know. Bones. I dare say you know him," Mr. Amos added: "Mr. Bateman, who
keeps the Bricklayers' Arms."

How funny, Gregory thought, to keep bricklayers' arms! And he wondered why
the bricklayers didn't keep their own arms, and who kept their legs, and he
might have asked if Mr. Amos had not called to a boy named Jim to "bring
Tartar over here, and look slippy."