As they passed out, the
Mistress chanced to look back.
She saw Cyril pull a bit of cake from his pocket and, with his
left hand, proffer it to Lad. The tawny dog stepped courteously
forward to accept the gift. As his teeth were about to close
daintily on the cake, Cyril whipped it back out of reach; and
with his other hand rapped Lad smartly across the nose.
Had any grown man ventured a humiliating and painful trick of
that sort on Lad, the collie would have been at the tormentor's
throat, on the instant. But it was not in the great dog's nature
to attack a child. Shrinking back, in amaze, his abnormally
sensitive feelings jarred, the collie retreated majestically to
his beloved "cave" under the music-room piano.
To the Mistress's remonstrance, Cyril denied most earnestly that
he had done the thing. Nor was his vehemently tearful denial
shaken by her assertion that she had seen it all.
Lad soon forgave the affront. And he forgave a dozen other and
worse mal-treatments which followed. But, at last, the dog took
to shunning the neighborhood of the pest.
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