No wonder that, as the boys hurried up behind me, they and Mr. Trevor—Mr. Trevor especially—thought he was mad.
Mr. Trevor kept his presence of mind, I must say, under what he thought the dreadful circumstances. He almost pushed his mother and sister and Taisy into the porch, and tried to push me in too. But I evaded him.
The boys and Esmé were quite out of reach—they were tearing after her, shouting to her to 'Come back, come back!' which did not tend to lessen the uproar. And when I started in pursuit, as of course I did, it must have seemed to any one looking on as if we had all gone mad together! Indeed, Taisy owned to me afterwards that, terrified as she was, she had hard work to keep down her laughter, especially when she heard me turn upon dignified Mr. Trevor, and in answer to his despotic—
'Go back, Miss Lanark, go back; I insist upon it,' shout back, 'Nonsense; I will not go back.'
And as I heard his next words—
'The dog must be shot at once. Boys, is there a gun about the place?' I grew desperate, for I knew that there was a gun—Rolf's—though he and Geordie had given their word of honour to mamma not to touch it without leave.
Then a new idea struck me. Instead of rushing round like the others—like the boys that is to say, for by this time Esmé had dropped in front of the porch, whence Zenia Trevor had dragged her in, and she was now sobbing on Taisy's shoulder—instead of rushing after Roughie, I 'doubled' and met him, my arms outstretched, and using every endearing and coaxing tone I could think of. And oh, the joy and relief when, almost dead with exhaustion by now, he flew into my clasp, and, panting and nearly choking, faintly rubbed his poor little head against me!
'He knows me, he knows me!' I shouted. 'He is not a bit mad; he is only wild with terror.'
But I had some trouble to get the others to believe me; their fright had only increased tenfold when they saw me catch him. In some marvellous way Mr. Trevor had got out the gun—I have always suspected that Taisy or Hoskins or one of them had already thought of it—and stood within a few paces of my dog and me. But for my having him in my arms, he would have made an end of Roughie, and certainly I would never have told this story.
As it was, for a moment or two he—Mr. Trevor, not the poor pet—was very angry.