"Why, Lion! I'm surprised at you!" said Jack; while Lion lay down on the floor, looking very much abashed.
"I sent him for butter, which we wanted to use at dinner. As I knew, when he came back, that the order, which I placed in a dish in the basket, had not been touched, I sent him again. 'Don't come home,' I said, 'till somebody gives you the butter.' He then went, and didn't return at all. So, as dinner-time came, I sent my brother to look after him. He found the grocery closed, and Lion waiting with his basket on the steps."
"The grocer is sick," Jack explained; "his son had gone to town with me; and so the clerk was obliged to shut up the store when he went to dinner." And he praised and patted Lion, to let him know that they were not blaming him for his failure to bring the butter.
"One day," said Annie, "he had been sent to the butcher's for a piece of meat. On his way home he saw a small dog of his acquaintance engaged in a desperate fight with a big dog,—as big as Lion himself. At first he ran up to them much excited; then he seemed to remember his basket of meat. He couldn't go into the fight with that, and he was too prudent to set it down in the street. For a moment he looked puzzled; then he ran to the grocery, which was close by,—the same place where we send him for things; but instead of holding up his basket before one of the men, as he does when his errand is with them, he went and set it carefully down behind a barrel in a corner. Then he rushed out and gave the big dog a severe punishing. The men in the grocery watched him; and, knowing that he would return for the basket, they hid it in another place, to see what he would do. He went back into the store, to the corner behind the barrel, and appeared to be in great distress. He snuffed and whimpered about the store for a while, then ran up to the youngest of the men—"
"Horace,—the young fellow who came out with us to-day," commented Jack. "He is full of his fun; and Lion knew that it would be just like him to play such a trick."
—"He ran up to Horace," Annie continued, "and barked furiously; and became at last so fiercely threatening, that it was thought high time to give him the basket. Lion took it and ran home in extraordinary haste; but it was several days before he would have anything more to do with Horace."
"Who can say, after this, that dogs do not think?" said the admiring Vinnie.
"Mr. Lanman thinks he has some St. Bernard blood," said Jack, "and that is what gives him his intelligence. He knows just what we are talking about now; and see! he hardly knows whether to be proud or ashamed. I don't approve of his fighting, on ordinary occasions; and I've had to punish him for it once or twice. The other evening, as I was coming home from a hunt after my horse, I saw two dogs fighting near the saw-mill."
Jack had got so far when Lion, who had seemed to take pleasure in being in the room till that moment, got up very quietly and went out with drooping ears and tail.
"He knows what is coming, and doesn't care to hear it. There's a little humbug about Lion, as there is about the most of us. It was growing dark, and the dogs were a little way off, and I wasn't quite sure of Lion; but some boys who saw the fight told me it was he, and I called to him. But what do you think he did? Instead of running to greet me, as he always does when he sees me return after an absence, he fought a little longer, then pretended to be whipped, and ran around the saw-mill, followed by the other dog. The other dog came back, but Lion didn't. I was quite surprised, when I got home, to see him rush out to meet me in an ecstasy of delight, as if he then saw me for the first time. His whole manner seemed to say, 'I am tickled to see you, Jack! and if you think you saw me fighting the sawyer's dog just now, you're much mistaken.' I don't know but I might have been deceived, in spite of the boys; but one thing betrayed him,—he was wet. In order to get home before me, without passing me on the road, he had swum the river."