“A big, gentle, kind, self-respecting Newfoundland dog?”

“Why, yes—I suppose so.”

Suppose! Don’t you suppose me any supposes!”

“Well, then, I have. Though why—”

“Well, now, tell me,” she demanded, sitting more and more erect, “if you ever saw a terrier pup trying to dig out a gopher and busy as he could be, and lands! no more chance of catching that gopher than if he was a hundred miles away.”

“Yes. But—”

“Well, then, that’s your father and you. He’s the Newfoundland; and you’re the little rat of a terrier that’s always been so busy with his own self-important concerns that—”

“The Confeds are coming!” shrilled a voice at the door.

It was Battle Jimmie, outlined against the heat-trembling outdoors.

“What?” groaned Emily Sessions.