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But his yellow hair was as glorious as ever, and the dimples came back with the smile that lighted his thin little face when he saw Fido; and he leaned on the window casement and waved his baby hands feebly, and cried: "Goggie! goggie!" till Fido saw the little boy's mother come and take him from the window.
The little boy did not hear this badinage. When he saw the woodchuck solemnly perched at the entrance to his hole he was simply delighted. "Oh, see!" cried the little boy, stretching out his fat arms and running toward the woodchuck, "oh, see, 'nuzzer 'ittle goggie! Turn here, 'ittle goggie, me love oo!"
"Is oo sit, 'ittle goggie?" asked the little boy, opening his blue eyes to their utmost capacity and looking very piteous. "Oo nose be so told, oo mus' be sit, 'ittle goggie!" But no, Fido was not sick, even though his nose was cold.
"Me love oo," said the little stranger, patting Fido's honest brown back; "me love oo, 'ittle goggie!" Fido knew that, for there were caresses in every stroke of the dimpled hands. Fido loved the little boy, too, yes, all at once he loved the little boy; and he licked the dimpled hands, and gave three short, quick barks, and wagged his tail hysterically.
The sun was high, the men had been long gone to the harvest fields, and the heat of the early autumn day had driven the birds to the thickest foliage of the trees. Fido could not understand why the little boy did not come; he felt, oh' so lonesome, and he yearned for the sound of a little voice calling "Goggie, goggie, goggie."
How each sudden sound, how each footfall, startled him! How he sat all those days upon the front door-stoop, with his eyes fixed on the fence-corner and his rough brown ears cocked up as if he expected each moment to see two chubby arms stretched out toward him and to hear a baby voice calling "Goggie, goggie, goggie." Once only they saw him, Fido, the flower, and the others.
Fido hastened to answer the call; the way he spun out of the wood-shed and down the gravel walk and around the corner of the house was a marvel. "Mamma says oo dot f'eas, 'ittle goggie," said the little boy. "Has oo dot f'eas?"
"Goggie, goggie, goggie!" said the voice. "Tum here, 'ittle goggie tum here, goggie, goggie, goggie!" Fido looked whence the voice seemed to come, and he saw a tiny figure on the other side of the fence, a cunning baby-figure in the yard that belonged to the house where the new neighbors were moving in.
"Turn, 'ittle goggie!" persisted the prattling stranger, and, as if to encourage Fido, the little boy stretched his chubby arms through the fence and waved them entreatingly. Fido was convinced now, so he got up, and with many cordial gestures of his hospitable tail, trotted down the steps and over the lawn to the corner of the fence where the little stranger was.
Then, at last, the little boy's mamma came out of the house and told him he had played long enough; and neither the red-headed woodpecker nor Fido saw him again that day. But the next morning the little boy toddled down to the fence-corner, bright and early, and called, "Goggie! goggie! goggie!" so loudly, that Fido heard him in the wood-shed, where he was holding a morning chat with Mrs. Tabby.
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