ZIP

The
Adventures
of a
Frisky
Fox Terrier
by

Frances Trego Montgomery

Author of BILLY WHISKERS

Illustrated by
Violet Moore Higgins

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ZIP

OR

The Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier

CHAPTER I

In Which Zip Is Introduced to the Reader

Zip belongs to Dr. Elsworth, who lives in the big, white house with the green blinds on the edge of the village of Maplewood. And at the present minute he is asleep on the front porch on a soft cushion in an old-fashioned rocking-chair that is swaying gently to and fro, dreaming of the days when he was a puppy chasing the white spot on the end of his tail, thinking it was something following him. And how he would bark at it and run around and around after it until he was so dizzy he would fall over! Then when the ground stopped spinning round, he would get up and go after it again, barking all the time for it to stop following him. Silly little puppy that he was, not to know it was his own tail he was chasing! Often he would bark so loudly in his sleep that it would awaken him, but he would soon fall asleep again and go on dreaming. Sometimes he would be chasing cows, holding on to their long tails; at others, squawking, cackling chickens or anything else that happened to be in the road.

One day when thus dreaming, he was just about to pull a mouthful of tail feathers out of Parson Higgins' pet rooster when the latch on the front gate clicked. Zip was awake in a minute, sitting up on the cushion with ears sticking straight up and every nerve alert to see who was coming in the doctor's yard.

The first look showed him a ragged tramp with battered hat, unshaven face and a bundle of clothes tied up in a dirty, faded red handkerchief strung on a cane over his shoulder. That one look was enough, for if there was one thing Zip despised and detested more than any other, it was a tramp. And for this one to dare to try to come in the front gate—the gate he never allowed anyone to enter unless they were well dressed—was more than he could stand, and he flew at the fellow as if he were the size of a lion and was going to devour him on the spot.

As for the tramp, he hated dogs as much as they hated him. It had been his experience that little dogs had just as sharp teeth as big ones and were much harder to drive off, as they were