But Frolic thought a fairy might possibly be found, and got into wild
habits of running about in the moonlight, and barking a great deal at
bats and night moths, fancying they were fairies; so that all the
neighborhood complained, and begged the grandmother to shut the dog up
evenings in the wood house; for though a pleasant animal by day, it
was altogether too noisy by night.

One day when Frolic was lying at the school house door, where it
learned a great deal listening to the recitations, the teacher read
aloud the story of Orpheus, who could tame wild animals with his lyre,
and then went on to say that she had heard of music by which animals
might be changed into persons. Frolic's white ears were pricked up,
and every word was treasured, and thought over, day after day. The
children wondered why the little dog did not play with them as usual;
they did not know how eagerly it was wandering about, listening to
every strain of music it could catch. The young ladies who played on
the piano could not imagine why that little dog was always under the
windows, and why it gave such a hopeful bark every time they began a
new Polka or Sehnsucht, and why it whined so sadly every time it was
over. When some soldiers marched through the village, they said the
dog had better enlist, he seemed so fond of the trumpet and drum.
When the hand organ players came and excruciated the villagers with a
wiry "Last Rose of Summer," they laughed to see the excited creature
jumping about, and one of them would have carried it off for a dancing
dog, if the grandmother had not run screaming after him. The old black
man who played on the fiddle, for the villagers to dance in the town
hall, said he could not guess why Frolic had taken such a fancy to
Minerva's Quickstep. The congregation could scarcely refrain from
laughing to hear the dismal howl the dog would set up in the church
porch when the whole choir started off in "Old Hundred," as if it were