“Come now! None of that—no throwing of stones. That isn’t nice. I can’t be friends with you if you throw stones at me.”
Of course neither of the boys understood Don’s kind of talk. The dog was just going to go closer to the boy who did not want to throw a stone at him, when, all of a sudden the “bad” boy, as I call him, threw the piece of rock, and it hit Don on the leg.
“Wow! Ouch! Yelp!” cried poor Don, as he limped away.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed the boy who had thrown the stone. “Look at him go! I knew I could make him run!”
“Aw, what’d you want to go and do that for?” asked the other boy, quickly. “Now I can’t get him.”
“Well, he wasn’t much good,” spoke the boy who had thrown the stone. “Let him go.”
“Guess I’ll have to,” said the good boy. “But I wish you hadn’t hit him.”
“So do I,” thought Don, who heard this talk as he limped away. “I don’t see why he wanted to throw a stone at me.”
And I do not see why myself, except that some boys do things without thinking. I do not believe boys ever want really to be cruel and mean, as they are when they stone dogs and cats. It is just that they do not think.