The moment he saw Norma place a foot on the lower step, he grumbled at such interference with his repast, and taking a firm hold on the bone with both jaws, he dashed off the stoop and ran towards Norma’s garden.
She stood watching him without any special motive in doing so, when suddenly she saw him burrowing a hole in her flower bed. She shouted and ran to stop such depredations, but Grip was pawing away with both front feet just as fast as he could, and the dirt flew out from under the active paws and scattered about for a radius of more than ten feet.
“Get out! Stop that, you rascal!” shouted Norma, now close enough to catch hold of his tail and try to pull him away.
But Grip had dropped the bone in the pit already made, and now tried to nose the soil back over it, while defying the drag Norma had on his appendage.
“Now I know what that awful smell is, you old tramp!” exclaimed Norma, angrily, as she gave up tugging at his tail, and instead ran to the cellar to get her garden tools.
The three girls in the cellar listened to her story of how Grip made a store room of her garden, and as they laughed appreciatively at the dog’s preference for a flower garden in which to save his future meals, Norma got her tools and went out.
With a little judicious hoeing and raking, she soon unearthed several well-decayed bones and chunks of raw meat which Grip could not finish at his meals, but planned to save them for a day of famine.
Norma tied a handkerchief about her nose as she dug up the odoriferous morsels and carried them on the shovel, held at arm’s length, down the lane to the barn yard where a compost heap was started for next year’s planting.
“There now! One book said that old bones and meat, as well as green garbage was excellent to mix in a compost heap before winter time, as it would all mature together.”
With this satisfaction of having performed a good deed, Norma returned to her flower garden to continue the weeding that had been so unpleasantly interrupted.