The Black-eyed Puppy
Copyright© 2026 by Katharine Pyle
Chapter 8
ONE day Mr. Bonelli and Mrs. Bonelli took us out along the street to a house where we had never been before. We went upstairs to a big light room with a window at the top, and there was a man there with a big box that stood up high on legs.
Mr. Bonelli got up on a little stage and called us dogs up, and made us sit down around him.
The man stood in front of us and pulled a cloth over the box and over his head. He looked so strange that I began to bark, —not a big bark, but a growling bark with my mouth shut; but Mr. Bonelli told me to keep still.
Something in the box went “click,” and the man took his head out from under the cloth and said, “All right; I’ll take another in a minute.”
Mr. Bonelli wouldn’t let us get down from the stage, and presently the man did the same thing all over again.
Then Mr. Bonelli dressed us in our acting things, and we had to get up on the stage and do different tricks. I had to stand up on a high stool and grin, and I had to stand on my hind legs and grin.
The man put his head under the cloth again, and the box went “click.” He did this over and over. Then at last he said, “There! That’s all. We ought to get some very good photographs out of those.” I don’t know what he meant.
After that Mrs. Bonelli took off our clothes and we all went home again.
We had been going to the theatre every day for a long time now, and I thought we would always keep on going just the same way, and then one time Mr. and Mrs. Bonelli got out their trunks and packed them. I wondered whether they were going away to leave us the way Tommy and his father and mother had.
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