"Who let out that infernal dog?" was his first salutation, without first addressing either the old man or his daughter by name.
"He must have broken loose, himself. Indeed, Doctor, we are so sorry—" began little Elsie, who had really been frightened out of her wits, and who had that organ unknown to the phrenologists, called Hospitality, very largely developed.
"Hold your tongue, girl, and let me attend to my own business!" was the surly interruption of the invalid father, who had stopped laughing, and who had at that juncture a very low development of the corresponding organ. "We are not sorry at all. Dr. Pomeroy, I told you this morning, when I ordered you out of this house, never to come near it again; and you had better paid attention to the order."
"Then you had that dog set loose!"
"That is a lie!" was the response. The doctor, who had used the same expression in a still more offensive form, not long before, was getting the chalice returned to his lips at very short notice. And the old man, in denying the act, intended to tell the exact truth—he had not turned the dog loose, or set him upon the doctor, except secondarily. Some hours before, when the medical man had just been dismissed for the first time, he had told the Scottish woman that 'he would bundle her out, neck and crop, if she did not set the dog on that man if he ever came near the house again!' and she had promised to obey his orders: that was all! Carlo, a dear friend of his young master, had always hated the doctor, who was his enemy, and never passed without snapping and growling at him; and the old woman well knew the fact. Consequently, when she saw the buggy dashing up the lane, and recognized it, she had religiously kept her promise, darted round to the kennel, unloosed the dog and directed his attention to the obnoxious individual, with a "Catch him, laddie!" that sent him flying at the doctor's throat just as he stepped to the ground. And it was only when the old woman believed the punishment going a little too far and the victim likely to be eaten up in very deed, that she had interposed and dragged the enraged brute from his prey. All this was unknown to both father and daughter, who merely supposed that the dog had broken loose at that awkward moment; and Robert Brand's disclaimer, though a very uncourteous one, had the merit of truth. But the doctor, just then enraged beyond endurance, literally "boiled over" at the word.
"I lie, do I?" he foamed. "If you were not a miserable cripple, I would horse-whip you on your own door-step, old as you are!"
"Oh, Doctor! oh, father!" pleaded the frightened Elsie, who did not know what might be coming after this.
"Hold your tongue, girl!" again spoke Robert Brand, who still stood leaning against the lintel of the door. "Horsewhip me, would you, you poisoning Copperhead! If I could not beat out your brains with this stick, I could set a woman at you who would take you across her knee and spank you till you were flat like a pancake!"
Dr. Pomeroy thought of the woman who had dragged off the dog, and had some doubts whether she could not indeed do all that her master promised. He seemed to have the luck, that day, to fall into the way of people sturdy of arm and strong of will!
"What do you want here?" was the inquiry of the old man, before the doctor could answer again, and remembering that there might be some special errand upon which he had a right to come.