“Cub? I didn’t say ‘cub,’ Bunny. It was a Baby. My, but you are a green little wild thing.” He smiled again, but this time Nibble wasn’t afraid of the long teeth he showed.
“You said it was like a little bear,” Nibble insisted, and he wrinkled up his own nose.
“Well, Cub or Puppy or Baby,” the dog went on. “That first dog wanted it the worst way. So he just trailed its people back to where they lived in a cave, and he hid up on top of the cave, where the gray smoke came creeping up through a crack. And sometimes he’d hear it laugh. And nobody thought of looking there for him.
“The dog would see the Man go out to hunt, and the Woman go down for water, and he could hear the Baby pattering around inside the cave. And then it would sit down, ‘plump!’ the way it did in the Forest. And then it would laugh again. And the dog’s tongue would just itch to tickle the Baby.
“So on the third day, when the Man went out to hunt and the Woman went down for water, he sneaked around to the cave door and first thing he knew he had his tickly tongue on the little soft thing. And his ears were so full of the noises it made that he didn’t hear its mother’s bare feet when she came back. And she threw the first thing that she had in her hand—which was the water—all over him.
“Of course that didn’t hurt him. He didn’t exactly like it any more than he liked the Baby’s fingers when they pulled his whiskers, but he never imagined she was fighting. He thought she was playing with him. So he trusted her—which is the whole secret about being trusted.
“And then wasn’t he glad. He just rolled around on the cave floor to dry himself—though the cave floor was never very clean. And he wriggled and giggled over it all. And he gave the Baby a lick with his tickly tongue so it laughed with him. But the Woman just stood there looking at him.
“Now, it’s a queer thing, Bunny, but Humans can’t stay angry if they laugh. There was the dog, all sprawly legs and waggly tail, not looking like a wolf at all, and the Baby laughing at him. And the Woman began to laugh, too. ‘You look so funny,’ she said, ‘you’ve got leaves in your whiskers.’ And so they were friends.”
CHAPTER V
NIBBLE HAS HIS DOUBTS ABOUT DOGS
“That was a lovely story.” Nibble chuckled, clear out to the tip of his tufty bunny tail. He chuckled so hard he forgot he was locked up in an uncomfortable cage, without a decent corner to snuggle in. “But you haven’t told me yet how the First Dog made friends with his Man. Go on. Please do.”