Oh! how they wept for the sufferings of their pet! They were not afraid of Nox, and had no scruple in handling the powerful mouth whose sharp white teeth had so often pretended to bite their hands, with a pretence as gentle as if they had been made of eggshell. At last the braver of the two held his lips and extracted the needle, whilst the other wiped the tears from her sister’s eyes that she might see what she was about. Nox himself sat still and moaned faintly, and wagged his tail very feebly; but when the operation was over he fairly knocked the little sisters down in his gratitude, and licked their faces till he was out of breath.
Then he talked to himself for a full half-hour about the injury, and who could have been the culprit.
And then he fell asleep and dreamed of his enemy, and growled at him.
But Benjy went out and threw a stick at Mister Rough. And when Mister Rough caught it he swung him by it violently round and round. But Mister Rough’s teeth were beginning to be the worse for wear, and at the fifth round he lost his hold for the first time in his career.
Then Benjy would have caught him to punish him, but either unnerved by his failure, or suspicious of the wicked look in Benjy’s eye, Mister Rough for the first time “feared his fate,” and took to his heels.
Benjy could not find him, but he found Tom, who was chasing a Scotch terrier with stones. So Benjy joined the sport, which would have been very good fun, but that one of the stones perversely hit the poor beast on the head, and put an end to the chase.
And that night a neighbor’s dog was lost, and there was another corpse in the river.
FROM THE MORGUE TO THE MOON.
Benjy went to bed, but he could not sleep. He wished he had not put that dog in the river—it would get him into a scrape. He had been flogged for Mr. Goodman’s spaniel, and though Mister Rough had been flogged for Lady Dumble’s cat, Benjy knew on whose shoulders the flogging should by rights have descended. Then Nox seemed all right, in spite of the needle, and would no doubt pursue his officious charities with sunrise. Benjy could not trust himself to get up early in the morning, but he could go out that night, and he would—with a hayfork—and get the body out of the water, and hide or bury it.
When Benjy came to the river-side a sort of fascination drew him to the Morgue. What if the body were already there! But it was not. There were only a kitten, part of an old basket, and the roller of a jack-towel. And when Benjy looked up into the willow, the moon was looking down at him through the forked limbs of the tree, and it looked so large and so near, that Benjy thought that if he were sitting upon a certain branch he could touch it with his hand.