DURING the several days which followed, Dick found himself contemplating with some satisfaction the fact that Fate, with very little assistance upon his part, had established his standing with his neighbor upon a somewhat more pacific footing. To be sure, he had not seen the girl again; but in their last interview she had at least treated him a little less like an insect, and there was some encouragement in this. Perhaps in time he might work up to the status of her dog, and possibly she might eventually come to recognize him as almost a human being. In fact, his satisfaction had reached a point of banishing his former phase of humiliation over the untoward situations of their first contacts; and now his sense of humor had come to the rescue and substituted a grin at each remembrance, in place of the qualms of self-abasement. He now began to feel a touch of real enthusiasm in the task which Bert Sands had set for him and to take a definite interest in the developments; and also to put considerable thought upon ways and means of discovering and circumventing whatever
