And that’s how we found the fellow who was sneaking around the hotel and scaring the daylights out of us. It’s how he came to live there with us, and it’s how we started a friendship with him that got to be one of the things that we’re proudest of of anything in the world. Besides that, it’s the reason why things happened to us that weren’t very pleasant while they were going on, but which were plenty exciting—exciting and some dangerous. It’s how Mark Tidd got another chance to show what a head he’s got, and what backbone there is in him—and, I’m glad to say, it gave the rest of us a little chance too, and we took advantage of it in a way that we aren’t ashamed of. And in the very end it brought us something that pretty nearly surprised us to death—something that I don’t believe ever was had by four boys in the United States.
On the whole, it was a good thing that Motu’s dog chased the porcupine and caught him—though the dog didn’t think so for a day or two.
CHAPTER VII
“Where have you b-been sleepin’, Motu?” Mark asked while we were trying to catch the dog to operate on him for porcupine quill.
“There,” says Motu, pointing to the hotel.
“But we searched it from one end to the other, and couldn’t find a thing.”
Motu smiled. “I show you,” he said. “I had a place not easy to find.”
He talked to his dog and after a while got close enough to him to hang on while we pulled out the quills. The dog yelped some, but we explained to him that it was necessary, and that he’d be a gone dog if we left him alone. Somehow that didn’t seem to do him any good, and after we were through he ran off and hid under the porch.
“Bring the dog from Japan?” Plunk asked.
“No. I found him back there. He was lost. He wanted to stay with me.”