CHAPTER IX
A ROUGH LOVER
For a second or two we stood staring at each other while Richard Dawson mopped the blood from his hand.
"Don't you see that your damned dog has bitten me?" he shouted, as though my silence infuriated him.
"I see," I said with my hand on Dido's collar to restrain her. "You shouldn't have been rude to me, sir."
He stopped staunching his wound and burst into a great roar of laughter which had no good humour in it.
"Lord, lord!" he said. "That's the best thing I've heard of this many a day. Why a little country hussy like you ought to be honoured by receiving a gentleman's kisses. There, my dear, get rid of your dog. I don't want to kick her brains out as I could easily do, and as she deserves to have done for having bitten me. Send her home with a stone at her heels and come and sit by me on the stile. You shall see how prettily a gentleman makes love."
I suppose I must have looked at him with the horror I felt for him, for he laughed again.