So that is what they did! And Charlie’s Auntie hung some curtains across the window and tied them with blue ribbon, and his mother put the rag rug on the floor, and placed the furniture around the room so that it looked _most_ cozy and _most_ comfortable.
Well, just when everybody was standing and admiring the house, Jane the cat came up, and she looked at the house for a minute. Then she walked straight in at the door and lay down on the rug, and she purred and purred as loud as she could purr, because she liked Charlie’s house so tremendously. But Topsy jumped in at the window and _he_ walked around the house and sat down on every one of the little chairs and even on the table, but when he jumped into the express cart, which was in the corner of the house, he liked it so much that he curled up and went to sleep. But Bingo was the most excited of all--he dashed around and around the house, and he jumped up in the air and barked and barked and BARKED!
The next day, when the builders were at work again, Charlie climbed up on the gate and called out to the builder who had given him the bricks, “Good morning, Mr. Builder! I have finished my house!”
The builder was most interested and he came over to look at the house that Charlie had built.
He said, “Did you build that house _all_ by yourself?”
And Charlie said, “Yes, I built that house _all_ by myself, and my Daddy helped me.”
Bingo was a very clever little dog--he learned very quickly all the tricks that Charlie taught. He could sit up and beg, and he could bark three times for the flag, and when Charlie put a piece of cake on his nose Bingo could toss it in the air and catch it in his mouth, and, if Charlie threw a stick, Bingo would always run and bring it back. Yes, Bingo could do all these things and he liked to do them again and again. He was such a clever little dog that all the boys in the neighborhood knew him well, and they used to watch him over the fence doing all the tricks that he had learned.
But there was _one_ thing that Bingo never _would_ learn and that was to come _immediately_ when he was called. If Bingo thought that Charlie was going for a walk or that his dinner was ready, he would come the very minute that Charlie called him; but if he was doing something interesting or something that he should not be doing, Charlie could call “Bingo, Bingo, Bingo,” till he was hoarse, Bingo would not come! He would wag his tail and perk up his ears to show that he had heard, but he would not come.