“Mrs. Waring is perfectly lovely, I think,” began Doris, tactfully, but suddenly broke off with a little cry of dismay.
“Oh, Sin! whose dog is that? Hadn’t you better get the chain on Scotty?”
Alas, the warning came too late! The strange dog had already offered some nameless canine impertinence to Sir Walter, whose temper was none of the most patient. Instantly he hurled himself upon the new-comer, and the fight was on.
The three girls had purposely loitered, and the quiet street was almost deserted. It was the universal dinner hour, and boys and girls were rapidly disappearing down various side streets, urged homewards by the double spur of sharp young appetites and savory odors of “mother’s cooking.”
“Help! help!” screamed Sin, and forthwith flung herself with more valor than discretion upon the wallowing mass in the middle of the dusty road.
Doris grew very white, as she set her back to the hedge, drew her spotless skirts tightly around her, and earnestly begged her friend to “be careful!” But heedless, brave, loving Sin, crying loudly now and terribly alarmed for Scotty’s safety, persisted in wild and none too prudent attempts to drag him bodily forth from the fray. The strange dog had fastened viciously upon his throat, and the fight began to look serious. Why didn’t some one come?
In that very minute some one did, and the “some one” was no other than the girl from Dakota. She had broken a stout switch from an apple-tree that overhung the sidewalk near at hand, and was belaboring the strange dog in a steady, business-like fashion, at the same time calling him off in ringing tones, and in a language that he evidently understood, if her astonished classmates did not.
“Kigelá! kigelá!” they thought they heard her say, over and over; and whether the strange words composed a sort of charm or secret incantation for dogs, or whether it was some compelling power in the personality of the black-haired girl, or merely the flail-like regularity of her vigorous blows, it is certain at any rate that he soon let go his hold, and ran yelping away.
Sir Walter, gallantly scrambling to his long legs and shaking his bleeding but still warlike head, would gladly have followed, but was forcibly restrained by his disheveled mistress, who had contrived at last to snap the chain upon his collar, and while breathlessly dragging him homewards, did not forget to call back over her shoulder in broken phrases her admiring gratitude to Yellow Star.