As De Hanna winced under the retort, Candelish, who had rummaged unnoticed in a drawer for some moments, produced a biscuit. Billy, watching out of the corner of his eye, pricked a ragged ear and whacked the carpet with his muscular tail.
“Hee, boy, hee, Billy!” Candelish said seductively. Billy rose upon his powerful bow-legs and hung out his tongue expectantly.
“Koot old Pillee!” uttered Gormleigh encouragingly. “Gleffer old poy!”
Billy vouchsafed the stage-manager not a glance; his bloodshot eyes were glued upon the biscuit as he stood over the brown paper parcel. Then, as Candelish, throwing an expression of eager voracity into his countenance, made believe to eat the coveted delicacy himself, Billy made a step forwards.... The end of the parcel projected from between his hind-legs.... De Hanna softly stepped to the fireplace and seized the tongs....
“Poo’ boy—poo’ ol’ Billy, then!” coaxed the acting-manager. He broke the biscuit with one inviting snap, Billy forgot the parcel, and De Hanna grabbed and got it. The next moment the bull, realizing his loss, pinned the representative of the Syndicate by the leg.
“Dash—dash—dash! Take the dash brute off, somebody!” shrieked De Hanna.
There was a brief scene of confusion. Then, as Billy retired under a corner table with a mouthful of ravished tweed, “He’s torn a piece out of your trow-trows, old man,” Candelish remarked sympathetically.
“He might have torn all the veins out of my leg!” De Hanna gasped.
“Den,” said Gormleigh, chuckling, “you would haf been Kosher.”
But Mrs. Gudrun was deeply disappointed in Billy. “Letting you off for a bit of cloth!” she said. “Why, the breed are famous for their bite. He ought to have taken a piece of flesh clean out—I shall never believe in that dog again!” She swept over to Gormleigh, who was busy disentangling the lengths of chewed string and removing the tatters of brown paper from Billy’s treasure-trove. It proved to be a green-covered, rather bulky volume of typescript. A red-bordered label gummed on the cover announced its title: