 
henry huggins was in the third grade at school. 
his hair looked like a scrubbing brush and most of his grown-up front 
teeth were in. 
he lived with his mother and father in a square white house on klickitat 
street. 
except for having his tonsils out when he was six and breaking his arm 
falling out of a cherry tree when he was seven, nothing much happened to 
henry. 
"i wish something exciting would happen," henry often thought. 
but nothing very interesting ever happened to henry, at least not until 
one saturday afternoon in march. 
every saturday afternoon henry rode downtown on the bus to go swimming at 
the y.m.c.a. . 
after he had swum for an hour, he got on the bus again and rode home just 
in time for dinner. 
when henry left the y.m.c.a. on this particular saturday, he had four 
dimes and a nickel in his pocket. 
so he went to the corner drugstore to buy a chocolate ice-cream cone. 
he thought he would eat the ice-cream cone, get on the bus, drop 
twenty-five cents in the slot, and ride home. 
that is not what happened. 
he bought the ice-cream cone with one of his dimes. 
then, as he was standing outside of the drugstore licking his chocolate 
ice-cream cone, he heard a thump, thump, thump. 
henry turned, and there behind him was a dog. 
he wasn"t any special kind of dog. 
he was too small to be a big dog, but, on the other hand, he was much too 
big to be a little dog. 
