Bunny stooped down, took hold of Patter’s head and turned it so the dog could look straight at the distant cows in the corn. Then Bunny spoke, while all the others kept silent.
“Patter, go drive those cows out! Chase ’em out!” said Bunny. “Go chase the cows!”
Patter barked once or twice, fixed his eyes sharply on the cows, and then, breaking away from Bunny, ran to the canal, jumped in, and swam across.
As soon as the dog was on the other side of the water he began racing up the hill, barking loudly all the while. From where they stood, the boys and the farmer could watch Patter plainly.
The dog ran the half mile distance much more quickly than the boys or Mr. Boardman could have done, even if they had swum over the canal. Reaching the field of corn, Patter rushed in, snapped at the legs of the cows, and so barked at them and worried them, but without hurting them, that they were glad to amble out of the cornfield into the meadow where they belonged.
“Well, that’s a pretty smart trick!” exclaimed the farmer. “I never saw a dog like that before. He’d be valuable to me. What will you sell him for, Bunny?”
“I’m never going to sell Patter!” declared Bunny proudly.
“How did you make him drive out the cows? I never saw him do it before!” exclaimed George.
“I didn’t know he could do it, either,” said Charlie and Harry.
“Well, my mother told me about a dog her father used to own when she was a little girl,” said Bunny, as he and the boys walked along with Mr. Boardman, who was going to mend the fence so the cows couldn’t get out again. “And this dog my grandfather had would chase pigs out of a field when he saw them, even if he was a long way off. So I thought maybe if that dog would chase pigs, my dog would chase cows—and he did.”