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interesting to remember, as she was doing now.
    Today it was a little lighter in the barn than it
had been that other time, for this was still summer. But the same dusty red lantern hung from a rafter and the cows were down at the other end of the barn, and again it was like being in a painting.
    Mrs. Speedy waved to the children and soon came over to them. "Well," she said. "I suppose you have come for your puppy?"
    "Yes," said Jerry proudly.
    "He's a fine dog, you bet," said Mrs. Speedy.
    "Yes," said Jerry. "Here's the dollar," he said.
    So Mrs. Speedy took the dollar and Jerry tenderly picked up his puppy, his own puppy, his little brown-and-white dog. The children were beside themselves with joy. Here they had this real live puppy, it was theirs, their very own real, honest-to-goodness dog, and nobody else's. Jerry let Rachel hold him sometimes because she had helped with the dusting, and also Uncle Bennie, showing him how to pat the puppy and not squeeze him. They just loved him, they did.
    As they left Speedys' barn Jerry happened to glimpse someone racing across the fields behind the dairy, leaping over the old telephone poles lying there. Jerry didn't pay much attention to the person because he was so excited about having his own puppy in his arms at last. Anyway there were dark shadows in the fields now and the only thing about
the leaping person he got any impression of was his hat. It was a sort of yellow-mustard-colored hat.
    Must be someone getting some milk,
he thought and soon forgot about the person. Jerry did not connect this person with that other person who had been trying to buy his dog. Naturally, he would expect a person who was planning to do something as important as buy a dog to approach the house from the front way, and not be coming leaping over telephone poles and brooks and skunk cabbages to get there.
    "What kind of a dog is he?" asked Rachel, this being her turn to hold the puppy a minute. "Did you say he is a fox terrier?"
    "Yes. He's purebred, part fox terrier and part collie. There may also be a little bull in him too," boasted Jerry.
    They were so pleased with, and interested in, the puppy they dragged Uncle Bennie all the long way to his home without noticing the distance at all. Rachel and Jerry could hardly eat one bite of the supper Gramma had prepared for them and they had no idea what they were eating until they reached the dessert. Then they knew that what they were eating was some of Gramma's homemade peach ice cream because of hard pieces of frozen peach that hurt their teeth.
    Usually Gramma urged them to eat more, more
of everything. "Eat more rolls," she'd say, when they had already eaten so many of her tiny delicious hot little rolls they didn't see how they could possibly swallow another one. Still they would always find space because Gramma would be hurt if they did not eat just one more and just one more. But tonight Gramma could see they were in a hurry to get home to show Mama their fine dog, so she only urged them once or twice, instead of her usual dozen times, to have more ice cream.
    Gramma was very pleased that Uncle Bennie had spent the afternoon dusting the pews. "He may be a minister when he grows up," she said.
    Uncle Bennie did not want them to leave with the puppy. But when Rachel and Jerry assured him he would see the puppy next Saturday, and every Saturday, he felt better. Anyway, he was awfully tired and sleepy and he sat down in the doorway, grabbing hold of his old bubbah, tickling his nose with it, sucking his thumb, and blinking his eyes drowsily.
    Uncle Bennie called not only his old pink blanket "bubbah," he called the little bits of wool he plucked from it and with which he tickled his nose and chin and even his knees "bubbah," too. When he waked up in the morning the first thing he would say, ecstatically, was, "Ah-h. Bubbah!" Sometimes
he would crawl around on his hands and knees picking up old stray pieces of hubbah he had dropped. And, outdoors,