“All right,” responded Ned. “Only, he’s a bad dog, just the same. He knew he’d no business to come.”
Zu-zu gave Bob a friendly little pat.
“You’d like to go, the same as us, wouldn’t you, Bob?” she said. “And we would go, too, if we were only boys.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be a boy,” asserted Bessie.
“I would,” averred Zu-zu.
Bob said nothing upon the subject. As a rule, he was quite satisfied with being a dog. Zu-zu’s touch and voice, and the fact that the threshing did not descend, filled him with sudden energy. Up he sprang, thinking the crisis over; bounding and barking he rejoiced mightily, and bade his master rejoice with him. But on the contrary Ned paid him not the slightest attention. Bob was a dog in disgrace.
Off the six went, the girls proudly keeping abreast just to show what they could do, and Bob clawing behind, trying to prove that he was as good as any one on the ice, but nevertheless making poor work of it when it came to turning corners.
They passed the Diamond Jo warehouse, and Commodore Jones’ “boats-to-hire” establishment, where wintered under cover the scull-boat; and still skirting the shore sped under the bridge, between the first pier and the high stone base.
Here the girls must stop.
Here Bob must stop.