"More pumpkin, Dad."
"If--what, sir?" Dad was prompting him in manners.
"IF?" and Joe laughed again. "Who said 'if'?--I never."
Just then Miss Ribbone sprang to her feet, knocking over the box she had
been sitting on, and stood for a time as though she had seen a ghost. We
stared at her. "Oh," she murmured at last, "it was the dog! It gave me
such a fright!"
Mother sympathised with her and seated her again, and Dad fixed his eye
on Joe.
"Did n't I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of a
dog outside the house altogether--eh?--did n't I? Go this moment and tie
the brute up, you vagabond!"
"I did tie him up, but he chewed the greenhide."
"Be off with you, you--" (Dad coughed suddenly and scattered fragments of
meat and munched pumpkin about the table) "at once, and do as I tell you,
you----"
"That'll do, Father--that'll do," Mother said gently, and Joe took Stump
out to the barn and kicked him, and hit him against the corn-sheller, and
threatened to put him through it if he did n't stop squealing.
He was a small dog, a dog that was always on the watch--for meat; a
shrewd, intelligent beast that never barked at anyone until he got inside
and well under the bed.
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