As he came nearer she splashed him and he barked joyfully. He made for her, to paw and sprawl upon her. She evaded him.
Awhile girl and dog sported together in the deep, happy and laughing as two children.
Then they raced for the shore. He reached it first and, a caricature of his usual shaggy self, ran up toward her clothes, flinging off showers of drops.
"Keep off, creature!" she ordered, her big voice emerging strangely from her wisp of dripping figure, as she walked delicately up the shingle.
CHAPTER XV
The Three J's
Old Mat was fond of telling his intimates that Monkey Brand was fly.
"He do love his little bit o' roguey-poguey," he would say with a twinkle. And it was the old man's opinion, often expressed, that weight for age Monkey would beat the crooks at their own game every time.
And when he set the little jockey to snout about and rout out the business of Joses, he knew he was setting his head-lad a task after his heart.
Monkey Brand had gone to work indeed with the tenacity and the tact that distinguished him. Once on a line, he hunted it with the ruthlessness of a stoat. But this time, it seemed, he had met his match. If Monkey was cunning as a fox, Joses was wary as a lynx.