more excited every minute, kept pushing each other away from the hole the
better to look into it, until at last two little beads of eyes glared out at
them, and then it was an easy thing for Tattine to reach in and draw out the
prettiest puppy of all.

"Why didn't you tell us there were five, Betsy, and save us all this extra
trouble?" and Tattine hurried away to deposit number five in the kennel; but
Betsy looked up with the most reproachful look imaginable as though to say,
"How much talking could you do if you had to do it all with your eyes and a
tail?"



CHAPTER IV. MORE TROUBLES

Patrick Kirk was raking the gravel on the road into pretty criss-cross
patterns, and Tattine was pretending to help him with her own garden rake.
Patrick was one of Tattine's best friends and she loved to work with him and
to talk to him. Patrick was a fine old Irishman, there was no doubt whatever
about that, faithful and conscientious to the last degree. Every morning he
would drive over in his old buggy from his little farm in the Raritan Valley,
in abundant time to begin work on the minute of seven, and not until the
minute of six would he lay aside spade or hoe and turn his steps towards his
old horse tied under the tree, behind the barn. But the most attractive thing
about Patrick was his genial kindly smile, a smile that said as plainly as
words, that he had found life very comfortable and pleasant, and that he was
still more than content with it notwithstanding that his back was bowed with
work month in and month out, and the years were hurrying him fast on into old
age.