“Oh, the poor dog will get tired! Don’t make him do so much.”
“He likes it,” Ralph said. “He’d chase sticks all day, I guess, if you’d throw ’em for him. But maybe it’s time he quit. I have to go after the cows, anyhow.”
“Where are they? Could we go with you?” asked Laddie eagerly.
“Do you live around here?” Russ wanted to know.
Ralph Watson told his name and where he lived, but he said it was a long distance to the cow pasture where he had to go, and he added that the mother of the Bunker children might not let them go.
“I’ll take you to-morrow if you want to come, though,” Ralph promised.
“Then we’ll go,” said Rose.
Then, in answer to a question, she told the others that she had been walking along the brook looking for watercress, of which Daddy Bunker was very fond. Rose was using the stick to poke aside the bushes on the edge of the brook when suddenly Jimsie had sprung out at her, driving her back against the tree, where she had stood, afraid to move while the dog barked so furiously.
“If I had only known he wanted to play I’d have played with him,” finished Rose, with a laugh. “But I thought he was a savage dog.”
“Oh, Jimsie is never ugly,” said Ralph. “He barks a lot, but I guess that’s because he has to do it when he helps me drive the cows. Well, I’ll see you again,” he added, as he started away with his dog.