“Oh, sir! what is the matter?”
“That young rascal has been in my strawberry patch again,” declared Mr. Pinkney, wrathfully. He seemed to forget that he had a boy of his own who was always up to mischief. “I’d like to wallop him.”
“But the dog might have bit him,” said Dot, trembling, and drawing away from the ugly looking animal.
“Oh, no, little girl,” said Mr. Pinkney, more pleasantly. “Jock wouldn’t bite anybody. He only scared him.”
“Well, he looks like he’d bite,” said Tess, doubtfully. “And he scared our cat, Sandy-face, almost to death.”
“Well, bulldogs always seem to think that cats are their enemies. I am sorry he scared your cat, girls.”
Tess and Dot hurried on to their gate. They looked for the boy in the garden, but he was nowhere to be found. When they entered the house, the back door was open and everybody seemed to be at the front.
The two girls went immediately up the back stairs to the bathroom to wash and make themselves tidy for dinner.
“Where do you s’pose he went, Tess?” asked Dot, referring to the strange boy.
“I don’t know,” said Tess. Then she stopped to listen in the hall outside the bathroom door.