Of course, they knew that the big dog would not really harm the fellow.
After some fifteen minutes Tess got up and motioned Dot to do the same. “We’d better start. The afternoon is going,” she said to her younger sister. “And I guess it’s a long walk home. Come on, Tom Jonah.”
The old dog lifted his head enquiringly. The muscles of his shoulders and fore-paws relaxed.
“Come on!” commanded Tess. “Leave him alone. Let him up, Tom Jonah! I guess he has been punished enough. Don’t you think so, Dot?”
The smaller girl nodded seriously, staring at the trembling Gypsy. “I hope you won’t ever try to steal our Ruthie’s hens again,” she said, pointedly.
The moment the fellow knew he was free, he scrambled up and dodged into the bushes. He did not stay for a word.
“That big girl must have gotten away by this time,” Tess said, cheerfully. “And he is too scared to catch her, anyway.”
Which was probably true. The two small girls walked away from the river bank in the direction where they knew the auto-stage road lay. Tom Jonah paced beside them, looking about suspiciously, and licking his lips now and then with his red tongue.
It was remarkable how ferocious he had been with that Gypsy, and how perfectly kind he was to the small Kenways. And nothing much could have overtaken them just then that Tom Jonah would not have attacked.
They came out of the fringe of wood that bordered the river and crossed a farmer’s fields. But the house was at a distance, and in the other direction from Pleasant Cove and the camps; so the girls did not go to that house.