"Thor," said Lynette, and now, though her voice, as before, was low and gentle, there was the note of command in it, "lie down!"
There was an experiment ... and it failed. Thor was on four feet in a flash; his growl was unmistakable now; the snarling note came back into it threateningly. She thought that he was going to fly at her throat....
Yet already was the lesser intelligence, though coupled with the greater physical power, confused.
Lynette moved slowly; she put her hands up above her head and stretched out her arms and yawned; Thor growled, but there was little threat in the growl; just suspicion. Again she moved slowly; close enough, in the restricted area embraced by the cabin walls, was the table; on it some morsels of food left from their dinner. Without rising from the bunk, she reached the tin plate; she took it up, all the while moving with unhastening slowness. Thor's eyes followed her straying hand; Thor had been fed, and yet the dog's capacity for food was enormous. He understood the meaning of her gesture; his eyes hungered.
She dropped the plate to the floor but, before it struck, not three feet in front of the dog, she cried out sharply, her voice ringing, her command at last emphatic:
"No, Thor! No! No, I tell you!"
Had she offered the dog the food she would have but awaked within him a new and violent distrust; he was not so easily to be tricked. But when she tossed before him something that he was slavering for, and then laid her command upon him to hold back, she achieved something over him; he would have held back in any case, but now he held back at her command.
"Watch it, Thor!" she cried out loudly. "Watch it, sir!"
The big dog stared at her; at the fallen morsels; back at her, plainly at loss. And then again, more sharply, she commanded him: