“He’s laughing!” cried Hal.
Indeed, this was true. The pendant upper lip of the dog was wrinkled back, so that he was showing his white teeth in a ridiculous grin!
“Well!” remarked Ned, staring at him. “It doesn’t make him look very pretty, anyway.”
Which, also, was true, for the grin was like a snarl.
The dog, having paid his respects, cuddled himself on the straw of the bows, in the sun, and there blinked, now and then expressing his ecstasy by a contented little sigh.
“He knows we’ve got to keep him,” declared Hal. “We can’t throw him up into the loft again, and there’s no other place for him, except the boat.”
“I’m glad of it, too,” asserted Ned. “Those people don’t deserve a dog, after the way they’ve treated him! Do they, pup?”
The dog, hearing himself addressed, whimpered as if in memory of a dark past, and at the same time thumped his tail in celebration of a bright present.
“But maybe we’ll have to return him,” prophesied Hal, mechanically working the sculling oar. “He’s a pointer, and perhaps he’s valuable.”