"That great savage brute of yours has almost killed our beautiful dog!"
I am afraid we did not feel very contrite. We never took our "great savage brute" anywhere to visit, except when he was especially invited; and besides, we had our own opinion, which was similar to Bruno's, of big dogs that robbed little cats.
It took a great deal to rouse Bruno, so much that we sometimes mistook his amiability for lack of courage.
We had often watched him chasing the animals that lax town laws had allowed to roam the streets of the only two villages we had ever known. He would go dashing after a pig or a cow. If the creature ran, he would chase it until he was exhausted; but if it stood its ground and calmly returned his excited gaze, he would stop, look at it for a minute, then turn and come trotting back, with an air that said plainly,—
"I was only in fun; I wanted to see what it would do."
There was a big watch-dog which lived in an enclosure we had to pass on our way to town. When we took Bruno that way for a stroll, as soon as he reached this lot, he and the other dog would greet each other through the picket-fence with the most blood-curdling growls and snarls. They seemed fairly to thirst for each other's life-blood. Then, each on his own side of the fence, they would go racing along, keeping up their growls and snarls, till they reached a place where there were half a dozen pickets broken out, so that either could have leaped through with ease.
Then what a change!
Their ears would droop, and their coats and tempers smooth down to the most insipid amiability. But at their next meeting they were quite as savage, till they again reached the opening in the fence. It was the same program, over and over.
Bruno liked to play at anger just for a little excitement, but when he found anything really worth a spell of the furies, it was quite another story.
The butcher-boy, who came every other day, took Bruno's tragic demonstrations for the real thing, and was terribly afraid of him. He used to shout to me, "Come out and hold the dog!" until he could run to the kitchen and get safely back outside the gate.