[Illustration: {TIPPY LYING DOWN.}]
Tippy was a little, black dog, and he lived at the engine-house, where
the great engines, which put out the fires, were kept.
[Illustration: {TIPPY BARKING.}]
He was a poor, miserable, little dog, without a home until the firemen
took pity on him and gave him one.
Dick was one of the horses that helped to pull the engine. He was very
large and black, with a white spot on his forehead. He and Tippy were
fine friends.
When it was cold the little dog would curl close down by Dick's back,
and sleep all night, as warm as could be.
One day, when it was Dick's dinner-time, and he was very hungry, Tippy
kept running into his stall and barking and biting at his heels.
Dick did not like it, and he wanted his dinner so much that it made
him cross. So he put down his head, took Tippy by the back of the
neck, and lifted him over the side of the low stall, as much as to
say:--
"If you won't go out I will put you out!"
[Illustration: {TIPPY CARRYING A BUCKET.}]
Tippy soon grew to know what the engines were for, and when the
fire-bells rang, and the great horses came from their stalls ready to
be harnessed to the engine, he would bark and jump up and down, and
beg to go too.
[Illustration: TIPPY, THE FIREMEN'S DOG.]
One day he hid under the driver's seat, and the firemen did not see
him, so he went to the fire.
After that, the instant an alarm sounded, Tippy would spring on the
engine. As it dashed down the street, the bells ringing, the firemen
shouting, he would bark to let the people along the way know he was
going to help put out the fire.
Every day the firemen would give Tippy a basket, and a penny to buy a
bone with. He would take the basket in his mouth, and trot across the
street to the butcher's for the bone. The butcher would take the penny
out, and put a bone in its place, and Tippy would run home to eat his
breakfast.
Once in a while Tippy would be very naughty, and would have to be
punished. Then the firemen would make him sit on a chair for a long
while, until he would promise, by a bark which meant, "Yes," that he
would be good.