Free Harry Cat's Pet Puppy by George Selden

jewel. (It was only glass, but an emerald couldn’t have been more precious.)
    â€œWell, I was just thinking—”
    â€œI know what you’re thinking! You know what I’m thinking? Let her get out and scrounge for herself! I’m not about to donate my collection to an old maid’s hope chest!”
    â€œAll right,” sighed Harry and looked away. A sad, distant expression came into his eyes. “I wonder if Huppy’s learned to pick locks yet.”
    A heavy minute passed. Then, “Take the bead,” said Tucker hopelessly. A terrible feeling of defeat overcame him. And the worst of it was, he felt that his misery was just beginning.
    He was right. The cat’s requests began with a ribbon, went on through beads, and were only brought to a screeching halt when he asked for a dime. “No!” shouted Tucker. “No loose change does she get! Not over my dead body!” Harry let the matter drop. He knew when a mouse had reached his limits. (But he still went on asking for—begging, if necessary, and grudgingly getting—some of Tucker’s most choice possessions.)
    In desperation the mouse took to ransacking all the trash baskets in the Times Square subway station while Harry was out. He found that most days he was able to dredge up satisfactory substitutes for his priceless junk. Such valuables as a pair of glasses with one lens still in, an automatic pencil with leads—to give that up almost broke his heart—and on this particular afternoon a ripped and laboriously repaired paper flower.
    â€œThere!” he said to the flower angrily. “And I hope she notices the fur under the Scotch tape.”
    There was a whoosh of braking wings at the drainpipe opening and Lulu Pigeon waddled in. “Ooo, Tucker, that’s darling! ” she said. “Who’s it for?”
    â€œThe Empress of the Upper West Side!” snapped the mouse. “As if you didn’t know.”
    â€œOo! oo! oo!” the pigeon gargled her falsetto laugh.
    â€œAnd please, Lulu, you wouldn’t make fun of another soul’s unhappiness.”
    Since he was alone so much lately, Tucker had gotten into the habit of complaining to Lulu about the sorrows of the world—and his own in particular. She wasn’t exactly the most serious confidante he could think of, but in this pinch, he found, she would do. Any reasonably sympathetic ear was a help.
    â€œHarry up paying court?” she asked.
    â€œHe is not paying court!” announced the mouse firmly. “I have told you repeatedly he is up there trying to con Miss Catherine into letting Huppy go live in Mr. Smedley’s apartment.”
    The reason Tucker was seeing so much of Lulu Pigeon was that, what with his recent pressing duties, he didn’t have time to go down to Bryant Park every night. So Lulu came to him, with bulletins about the dog. And the bulletins were mostly bad, so bad that Tucker began to think of his friend as a bird of ill omen—a kookoo bird of ill omen, at that.
    â€œHow is Huppy, by the way?” he asked. “Did you tell him to take a bath, like I said?—but to stay somewhere warm till his fur dries out so he wouldn’t catch—”
    â€œI told him everything.”
    â€œDid he do it?”
    â€œNo. He said, ‘Phooey!’ and went off with the pack.”
    Tucker shook his head. “He must be a mess.”
    â€œHe’s beautiful!” said Lulu. “Just the color of soot. He blends right in to the city snow. The cops’ll never catch that dog.”
    â€œLulu—thank you for all this cheery information, but if you’re in a hurry—”
    â€œI’m not in a hurry. Besides, I want to say hello to—and speak of the devil! Here he is! Hi, Harry.”
    â€œHi, Lulu.” Harry Cat slipped into the drainpipe, and as usual the first thing he did was to lick himself clean. The trip uptown and back was very