heaved him into the
stream. He fell into a little pool of clear brown water: he spluttered
and paddled there for a second, then he got his footing and scrambled
across the stones up to the opposite bank, where he began shaking the
water from his coat among the long grass.

"Oh, how could you be so disgracefully cruel?" she said, with her face
full of indignation.

"And how could you be so imprudent?"' he said quite as vehemently.
"Why, whose is the dog?"

"I don't know."

"And you catch up some mongrel little cur in the middle of the
highway--He might have been mad."

"I knew he wasn't mad," she said: "it was only a fit; and how could
you be so cruel as to throw him into the river?"

"Oh," said the young man, coolly, "a clash of cold water is the best
thing for a dog that has a fit. Besides, I don't care what he had or
what I did with him, so long as you are safe. Your little finger is of
more consequence than the necks of all the curs in the country."

"Oh, it is mean of you to say that," she retorted warmly. "You have no
pity for those wretched little things that are at every one's mercy.
If it were a handsome and beautiful dog, now, you would care for that,
or if it were a dog that was skilled in getting game for you, you
would care for that."

"Yes, certainly," he said: "these are dogs that have something to
recommend them."

"Yes, and every one is good to them: they are not in need of your
favor. But you don't think of the wretched little brutes that have
nothing to recommend them, that only live on sufferance, that every
one kicks and despises and starves."

"Well," said he with some compunction, "look there! That new friend of
yours--he's no great beauty, you must confess--is all right now. The
bath has cured him. As soon as he's done licking his paws he'll be off
home, wherever that may be. But I've always noticed that about you,
Wenna: you're always on the side of things that are ugly and helpless
and useless in the world; and you're not very just to those who don't
agree with you. For after all, you know, one wants time to acquire
that notion of yours--that it is only weak and ill-favored creatures
that are worthy of the least consideration."

"Yes," she said rather sadly, "you want time to learn that."

He looked at her. Did she mean that her sympathy with those who were
weak and ill-favored arose from some strange consciousness that she
herself was both? His cheeks began to burn red. He had