[pshrynk]

Vera looked over at the slumbering Vivaldi. He really does stink, she thought. And her steamer trunk would never be the same. "Right!" she exclaimed, "Gotta do something about this!"

She snuck out of the room quietly and went to the steward's nook. There was a small sign stating that she was thanked for patience she didn't know she'd had, and that he would be "right back." Snooping around in the back of the room, she found a large basin and some soap. Filling it with warmish water from the spigot handy in the room, she headed back to the cabin.

The basin was situated in the last remaining free space on the floor. Picking up the puppy, who was twitching as if chasing several rabbits at once, she said, "Okay, Viv! Time for a nice little bath!"

Several things happened all at one time. Since this is narrative, rather than visual, they will be described in something of a sequence: Vivaldi's eyes snapped open at the first mention of "b". His legs started churning, as if being pursued by the Really Big Brother of the rabbits he had just been chasing. He flipped completely over backward, landing at the edge of the basin. The basin, in turn, flipped up in the air. Vera said, "Oh sh."

The door slammed shut behind him and Vivaldi ran as fast as he could down the hallway. That was close! The only other time in his life that he'd had a bath involved a gunney sack and a brick.

Fortunately, the big mouth breather who had owned him previously had been too stupid to know how to tie anything other than a granny knot and Vivaldi had managed to struggle free. He'd come to the surface just as the river boat was gliding by and the rest was history.

He wondered what he was going to do now that he was once more free from human entanglement. In his mind, giving a dog a bath was the equivalent of getting a divorce. He started to absently sniff around for food.

"Hello, little... doggy!" he heard from above him.

Vivaldi looked up just as the bag swooped down over his head.