The first thing I heard as I came into the marketplace was some one calling "Meat! M-E-A-T!"
"There's Matthew Mugg," I said to myself. "He'll know where this Doctor lives. Matthew knows everyone."
So I hurried across the market-place and caught him up.
"Matthew," I said, "do you know Doctor Dolittle?"
"Do I know John Dolittle!" said he. "Well, I should think I do!
I know him as well as I know my own wife--better, I sometimes think. He's a great man--a very great man."
"Can you show me where he lives?" I asked. "I want to take this squirrel to him. It has a broken leg."
"Certainly," said the cat's-meat-man. "I'll be going right by his house directly. Come along and I'll show you."
So off we went together.
"Oh, I've known John Dolittle for years and years," said Matthew as we made our way out of the market-place. "But I'm pretty sure he ain't home just now. He's away on a voyage. But he's liable to be back any day. I'll show you his house and then you'll know where to find him."
All the way down the Oxenthorpe Road Matthew hardly stopped talking about his great friend, Doctor John Dolittle--"M. D." He talked so much that he forgot all about calling out "Meat!" until we both suddenly noticed that we had a whole procession of dogs following us patiently.
"Where did the Doctor go to on this voyage?" I asked as Matthew handed round the meat to them.
"I couldn't tell you," he answered. "Nobody never knows where he goes, nor when he's going, nor when he's coming back. He lives all alone except for his pets. He's made some great voyages and some wonderful discoveries. Last time he came back he told me he'd found a tribe of Red Indians in the Pacific Ocean--lived on two islands, they did. The husbands lived on one island and the wives lived on the other. Sensible people, some of them savages.