“No,” agreed Tom and Ned.
Bob did not join in this opinion. Nothing that Big Mike would do could make up, in the mind of Bob, for past offenses.
[ CHAPTER XV]
JUST ABOUT BOB
Bob had now rounded into a fine, strong dog, pleasing in manners and respectable in appearance. At the time of his rescue from the barn by Ned and Hal he was in his hobbledehoy period—in dogs, as in boys, that awkward, sappy state betwixt puppyhood and eye-teethhood. Out of this he had grown up, under the good food and kind treatment of the Miller household, into a dog who was a credit to the family.
He was rather larger than a pointer should be, with a head unusually wide and full, a sign of great intelligence. His nose was a bit blunt; and this, and his head, and his stubbornness, caused critics to hold that somewhere in his ancestry was a strain of bulldog blood.
His ears were thin and long and velvety, drooping below his chops; his lips were loose and swaying, and the skin of his neck was loose and wrinkly. His eyes were a beautiful, faithful brown. His coat was a rich mahogany, and was even and glossy. He had a magnificent chest—broad, massive, with a bone that jutted out like that of a turkey gobbler. Behind it was a barrel of a body, which all of Mrs. Miller’s stuffing never could make else but lean; while his ribs narrowed away until at his flanks they ended in a sad hollow.
In truth, Bob’s front half was much superior to his rear half, which ran off into a short, stubby tail tipped with a warty knob. Whether some accident had happened, to blight this tail in Bob’s infancy, or whether his mother’s family had been so unexpectedly large that there had not been material enough for finishing Bob completely, no one could say. At any rate, he was not fitted with a tail such as a dog of his size and breed should have, and he was always more or less conscious of the fact.