“Are you sure about that?” Ford asked. “Emily failed to mention that of the eight chickens, seven of them are roosters. When they really get going, they’re like a choir of sopranos with their throats cut. And usually well before dawn.”

“Roosters are kind of like alarm clocks, aren’t they?” Lila persisted, still ignoring him. “We can put alarm clocks on our list. That’s a good one. Oh! And how about when a car is driving down the road? There are a lot of different traffic sounds we can teach Jeeves.”

“Including the ice-cream truck?” Emily asked, getting into the spirit of things.

“Especially the ice-cream truck.” Lila’s pen tapped against the pad of paper in a thoughtful pause. “Let’s see, what else… The doorbell, maybe? For when your friends come over to play?”

Ford whipped around and shook his head, but it was no use. Lila wasn’t looking at him and therefore couldn’t see the warning he was trying to send her way.

“No, thank you.”

“You don’t have a doorbell? That’s okay. Knocking works, too. Jeeves is really smart. We can teach him that they mean the same thing.”

“No.”

“Well, maybe we could just add it in case—”

“No, no, no, no, NO!” Emily’s vehemence grew with each repetition.

“Are you not allowed to answer the door?” Now Lila gave him her attention, her head swiveling toward his. “We don’t have to teach her to open it—only to know that there’s someone there. In case you’re in the shower or something.”

Ford tried to make the quick motion of a knife across his throat, but Emily’s face had already started to crumple in on itself, all of her placid happiness coming to a crushing halt. At the sight of it, Ford’s heart started to do the same, clenching with a familiar sensation of frustration and helplessness.

“This is a stupid game,” Emily announced. Her thumb went automatically to her mouth, her other hand clutching Jeeves around the neck. The puppy took it like the true gentleman his name suggested, determined to absorb his lady’s suffering no matter the cost. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

Lila looked as though she wanted to protest, but Ford just nodded. “Jeeves could probably use a break. Why don’t you take him to your room for a few minutes?”

Emily gave a resolute sniffle, but there was little she could do to prevent the tears from gathering in her eyes. She held her head high as she marched through the living room, her puppy on floppy legs as he trailed in her wake.