"She suggested an alternative that, I am rather inclined to think, might be better," he answered. "It's certainly simpler. . . ."
Again she smiled faintly. "I'm not certain that Mrs. Green's simpler alternative strikes me as being much safer than your thirdly," she murmured. "Incidentally, am I failing again in my obvious duties? It seems to me that Binks sort of expects something. . . ." Another fusillade of tail thumps greeted the end of the sentence.
"Great Scott!" cried Vane, "I should rather think you were. However, I don't think you could very well have known; it's outside the usual etiquette book." He handed her the indiarubber dog. "A feint towards the window, one towards the door—and then throw."
A quivering, ecstatic body, a short, staccato bark—and Binks had caught his enemy. He bit once; he bit again—and then, a little puzzled, he dropped it. Impossible to conceive that it was really dead at last—and yet, it no longer hooted. Binks looked up at his master for information on the subject, and Vane scratched his head.
"That sure is the devil, old son," he remarked. "Have you killed it for keeps. Bring it here. . . ." Binks laid it obediently at Vane's feet. "It should squeak," he explained to Joan as he picked it up, "mournfully and hideously."
She came and stood beside him and together they regarded it gravely, while Binks, in a state of feverish anticipation, looked from one to the other.
"Get on with it," he tail-wagged at them furiously; "get on with it, for Heaven's sake! Don't stand there looking at one another. . . ."
"I think," his master was speaking in a voice that shook, "I think the metal squeak has fallen inside the animal's tummy. . . ."
"You ought to have been a vet," answered the girl, and her voice was very low. "Give it to me; my finger is smaller."
She took the toy from Vane's hand and bent over it.