throats. I looked at Miss
Laura. If she had said a word, I would have run in and helped the dog
that was getting the worst of it. But she told me to keep back, and ran
on herself.

The boys were throwing water on the dogs and pulling their tails, and
hurling stones at them, but they could not separate them. Their heads
seemed locked together, and they went back and forth over the stones,
the boys crowding around them, shouting, and beating, and kicking at
them.

"Stand back, boys," said Miss Laura, "I'll stop them." She pulled a
little parcel from her purse, bent over the dogs, scattered a powder
on their noses, and the next instant the dogs were yards apart, nearly
sneezing their heads off.

"I say, Missis, what did you do? What's that stuff? Whew, it's pepper!"
the boys exclaimed.

Miss Laura sat down on a flat rock, and looked at them with a very pale
face. "Oh, boys," she said, "why did you make those dogs fight? It is so
cruel. They were playing happily till you set them on each other.
Just see how they have torn their handsome coats, and how the blood is
dripping from them."

"'Taint my fault," said one of the lads, sullenly. "Jim Jones there
said his dog could lick my dog, and I said he couldn't and he couldn't,
nuther."

"Yes, he could," cried the other boy, "and if you say he couldn't, I'll
smash your head."

The two boys began sidling up to each other with clenched fists, and a
third boy, who had a mischievous face, seized the paper that had had the
pepper in it, and running up to them shook it in their faces.

There was enough left to put all thoughts of fighting out of their
heads. They began to cough, and choke, and splutter, and finally found
themselves beside the dogs, where the four of them had a lively time.

The other boys yelled with delight, and pointed their fingers at them.
"A sneezing concert. Thank you, gentlemen. Angcore, angcore!"

Miss Laura laughed too, she could not help it, and even Billy and I
curled up our lips. After a while they sobered down, and then finding
that the boys hadn't a handkerchief between them, Miss Laura took her
own soft one, and dipping it in a spring of fresh water near by, wiped
the red eyes of the sneezers.

Their ill humor had gone, and when she turned to leave them, and said,
coaxingly, "You won't make those dogs fight any more, will you?" they
said, "No, sirree, Bob."

Miss Laura went slowly home, and ever afterward when she met any of
those boys,