“What in the name of goodness are you doing, Larry?” she demanded unkindly. “Bringing the car to be christened? I do wish you’d behave decently in my village, whatever you do in your own or in Verity’s. Take the horrid thing away at once!”
Larrupper, with a final effort, wrenched his new mudguards into freedom, and pushed back his cap, panting,
“I’m hanged if I can understand why life should be so disappointin’!” he grumbled, turning pathetic eyes upon her stern countenance. “I had to climb up here to avoid slaughterin’ somebody’s baby, an’ then you come along an’ pitch into me for jackin’ up my own mudguards! By the way, what are you doin’ with one of Christian’s chickens?”
Deb looked down at the smiling pup at her feet, flapping a curving tail lustily against her skirt.
“It fell upon me an hour ago,” she explained worriedly, “and I’m afraid it thinks it has acquired me. We’ve been playing hide and seek all over the village, and it always wins. I’ve had an awfully expensive time with it, too. It sampled all the cheeses in Turner’s, and ran a cat to earth in an open box of biscuits. I thought I’d escaped it when I rushed in to try the new organ-stop, till I suddenly saw its nose sticking out from under the altar! Do please haul it into the car and run it up to the kennels.”
“Right you are! Sling it over.” Larrupper stretched out an inviting hand, and the puppy backed promptly. “Come on up—up, my beauty! Here, boy—here! Good dog—good old dog—nice little dog—hang the brute, I’m afraid it isn’t havin’ any!”
Deb stooped for the hound, but it flopped round to the back of her, and it was only after a wild, teetotum chase that she succeeded in grabbing it. Breathless and dishevelled, she pushed her limp prey into the car, and stood back; whereupon it eluded Larry’s grasp with an eel-like wriggle, and instantly fell out again.
“You’ll have to come, too,” Larrupper said, alternately shrieking with laughter and trumpeting every hunting call he could think of, but Deb shook an obstinate head.
“No. I’m not coming in that direction at all. It’s got to go in the car whether it likes it or not. You can hold it all right if you try. And I’m sure there must be something wrong with you, Larry, when so young a dog hates you horribly at first sight!”
Five times she bundled it into the motorist’s arms, and five times it escaped him with ease, rushing back to the girl with ecstatic recognition; but the sixth time Larry grabbed hard and drove away like the wind; and a Cruelty Inspector rushed his bicycle in front of him, and demanded his name and address.