"Take care that my Grip doesn't roll you over," I exclaimed, for the dog had no muzzle on; "I can't always hold him, when he takes a dislike."
"Grip, come here," he said, "and talk to me. I have got a dozen dogs, who could eat you, Grip. But if you are good, they shall be good to you."
I could not help laughing at this idea, for Grip could thrash any three dogs I knew. But to my astonishment, Grip came up, and wagged his tail softly to Sir Roland, and sniffed about him pleasantly, and then offered his grisly ears for a loving rub.
"Don't be nervous, doggy," went on Sir Roland, as if he were talking to an Italian greyhound; "you smell rather doggy; but I don't mind that. If your master goes for a fly every day, and you swim after him, you'll soon be cured."
"Only fancy," I said, as I pulled his tail, that he might not take up with a stranger so; "he had never seen the sea before, any more than I had; but the moment he knew I was in your boat, in he dashed, to come and look after me. And he is not at all a water-dog, as you must know, having such a lot of dogs of your own. He swallowed such a lot of salt water, that he could only gurgle, instead of growling, when the sailors petted him; and I do believe if you had not managed to get hold of his collar, with that long stick, he would have been a drowned dog, the same as I have seen twenty of together, when the wind blows down the reservoir of the Water-company. Oh, how sad it must be, for their Master and Mistress. If Grip was to die, I never should get over it."
"What a soft you are! Why, you are crying now, with Grip all alive to lick your face! Such a chap, as you, would never do at Harrow. We should call you 'Fanny,' instead of Tommy Upmore. Now, don't be offended. You can't expect to be anything but a muff, after going to a private school, you know."
"Bill Chumps is not a muff, and he was there six years. If Bill Chumps heard you talk like that, he'd take you by the back of the neck, and throw you over the top of that bathing-waggon."
"I beg your pardon, Tommy," said Sir Roland, whose nature was truly generous; "it was cowardly of me to talk like that, when you can't help yourself, of course. Every fellow should stick up for his own hole. But what Bill Chumps are you talking about? There can't be very many Bill Chumpses, I should think."
"I should rather think not. There is nobody like him. He is gone to Pope's Eye College now, at Oxford, with a scholarship founded by his own father, for the benefit of all descendants. And they say he gets on wonderfully, though everybody cut him, for a week or so."