Heavy footsteps were descending the stairs. In the distance, the soprano dog had reached A in alt., and was holding it, while his fellow artiste executed runs in the lower register.
"Get up!" hissed Jimmy. "There's somebody coming! Get up, you idiot, can't you!"
It was characteristic of Jimmy that it never even occurred to him to desert the fallen one, and depart alone. Spike was his brother-in-arms. He would as soon have thought of deserting him as a sea-captain would of abandoning the ship.
Consequently, as Spike, despite all exhortations, continued to remain on the floor, rubbing his head and uttering "Gee!" at intervals in a melancholy voice, Jimmy resigned himself to fate, and stood where he was, waiting for the door to open.
It opened the next moment as if a cyclone had been behind it.
CHAPTER VII — GETTING ACQUAINTED
A cyclone, entering a room, is apt to alter the position of things. This cyclone shifted a footstool, a small chair, a rug, and Spike. The chair, struck by a massive boot, whirled against the wall. The foot-stool rolled away. The rug crumpled up and slid. Spike, with a yell, leaped to his feet, slipped again, fell, and finally compromised on an all-fours position, in which attitude he remained, blinking.
While these stirring acts were in progress, there was the sound of a door opening upstairs, followed by a scuttering of feet and an appalling increase in the canine contribution to the current noises. The duet had now taken on quite a Wagnerian effect.
There raced into the room first a white bull-terrier, he of the soprano voice, and—a bad second—his fellow artiste, the baritone, a massive bull-dog, bearing a striking resemblance to the big man with the big lower jaw whose entrance had started the cyclone.
And, then, in theatrical parlance, the entire company "held the picture." Up-stage, with his hand still on the door, stood the man with the jaw; downstage, Jimmy; center, Spike and the bull-dog, their noses a
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