boy, speaking very slowly, and with no excitement
at all.

A slap on the side of his head, from his mother's punitive palm, made
him stagger a little. Her hand was upraised for a second installment of
rebellion-quelling--when a slender little body flashed through the air
and landed heavily against her chest. A set of white puppy-teeth all
but grazed her wrathful red face.

Lass, who never before had known the impulse to attack, had jumped to
the rescue of the beaten youngster whom she had adopted as her god. The
woman screeched in terror. Dick flung an arm about the furry whirlwind
that was seeking to avenge his punishment, and pulled the dog back to
his side.

Mrs. Hazen's shriek, and the obbligato accompaniment of the
washerwoman, made an approaching man quicken his steps as he strolled
around the side of the house. The newcomer was Dick's father,
superintendent of the local bottling works. On his way home to lunch,
he walked in on a scene of hysteria.

"Kill her, sir!" bawled the washerwoman, at sight of him. "Kill her!
She's a mad dog. She just tried to kill Miz' Hazen!"

"She didn't do anything of the kind!" wailed Dick. "She was pertecting
me. Ma hit me; and Lass--"

"Ed!" tearily proclaimed Mrs. Hazen, "if you don't send for a policeman
to shoot that filthy beast, I'll--"

"Hold on!" interrupted the man, at a loss to catch the drift of these
appeals, by reason of their all being spoken in a succession so rapid
as to make a single blurred sentence. "Hold on! What's wrong? And where
did the pup come from? He's a looker, all right a cute little cuss.
What's the row?"

With the plangently useless iterations of a Greek chorus, the tale was
flung at him, piecemeal and in chunks, and in a triple key. When
presently he understood, Hazen looked down for a moment at the
puppy--which was making sundry advances of a shy but friendly nature
toward him. Then he looked at the boy, and noted Dick's hero-effort to
choke back the onrush of babyish sobs. And then, with a roughly
tolerant gesture, he silenced the two raucous women, who were beginning
the tale over again for the third time.

"I see," he said. "I see. I see how it is. Needn't din it at me any
more, folks. And I see Dicky's side of it, too. Yes, and I see the
pup's side of it. I know a lot about dogs. That pup isn't vicious. She
knows she belongs to Dick. You lammed into him, and she took up and
defended him. That's all there is to the 'mad-dog' part of it