“I'm afraid,” said Trent slowly, “that I shall not see your charming friend. I have to run up to Town next week on—on business.”
“Oh!” Sara's disappointment showed itself in her voice. “Can't you put it off?”
He halted outside a tobacconist's shop. “Do you mind waiting a moment while I go in here and get some baccy?”
He disappeared into the shop, and Sara stood gazing idly across the street, watching a jolly little fox-terrier enjoying a small but meaty bone he had filched from the floor of a neighbouring butcher's shop.
His placid enjoyment of the stolen feast was short-lived. A minute later a lean and truculent Irish terrier came swaggering round the corner, spotted the succulent morsel, and, making one leap, landed fairly on top of the smaller dog. In an instant pandemonium arose, and the quiet street re-echoed to the noise of canine combat.
The little fox-terrier put up a plucky fight in defence of his prior claim to the bone of contention, but soon superior weight began to tell, and it was evident that the Irishman was getting the better of the fray. The fox-terrier's owner, very elegantly dressed, watched the battle from a safe distance, wringing her hands and calling upon all and sundry of the small crowd which had speedily collected to save her darling from the lions.
No one, however, seemed disposed to relieve her of this office—for the Irishman was an ugly-looking customer—when suddenly, like a streak of light, a slim figure flashed across the road, and flung itself into the melee, whist a vibrating voice broke across the uproar with an imperative: “Let go, you brute!”
It was all over in a moment. Somehow Sara's small, strong hands had separated the twisting, growling, biting heap of dog into its component parts of fox and Irish, and she was standing with the little fox-terrier, panting and bleeding profusely, in her arms, while one or two of the bystanders—now that all danger was past—drove off the Irishman.
“Oh! But how brave of you!” The owner of the fox-terrier rustled forward. “I can't ever thank you sufficiently.”
Sara turned to her, her black eyes blazing.