he had saved up grew littler and littler.

Then he sold his piano, and let the mice live
in a bureau-drawer. But the money he got for
that too began to go, so he sold the brown suit
he wore on Sundays and went on becoming
poorer and poorer.

And now, when he walked down the street
in his high hat, people would say to one another,
"There goes John Dolittle, M.D.! There was a
time when he was the best known doctor in the
West Country--Look at him now--He hasn't
any money and his stockings are full of holes!"

But the dogs and the cats and the children
still ran up and followed him through the town
--the same as they had done when he was rich.



THE SECOND CHAPTER

ANIMAL LANGUAGE

IT happened one day that the Doctor was sitting in his kitchen talking
with the Cat's-meat-Man who had come to see him with a stomach-ache.

"Why don't you give up being a people's doctor, and be an animal-doctor?"
asked the Cat's-meat-Man.