William did not explain that he was trying to teach Jumble to be a sheep dog. He withdrew himself and Jumble and the whistle out of harm’s way as quickly as possible.
He knew that it would be useless to continue the training of Jumble within earshot of his father. It would be safer to withdraw to the other end of the village where there was no possibility of his father hearing it. It was particularly annoying because he’d thought that just before his father came out Jumble really had begun to understand what he wanted him to do. He slipped the whistle into his pocket and set off down the road, Jumble following merrily at his heels. Jumble evidently thought that the walk through the rabbity wood was going to come off at last.
Right at the end of the village was a large brown house with a field behind it. The field was empty and well hidden from the road. Here William decided to complete the training of Jumble. Armed with a little pile of stones and his whistle he patiently threw stones and whistled his one blast then his two as Jumble departed and returned. Jumble was fetching the stones in a perfunctory fashion as one who does it merely to oblige. His considered opinion was that as a game it was going on a bit too long. It was in any case rather a puerile amusement for a dog who alone and unaided could put to flight great hordes of large white animals. And he wanted to have a go at those rabbits.
William really thought that Jumble knew what was expected of him at last. He decided to try without the stones. It was a great moment. He blew a single blast on his whistle and then waited to see if Jumble would fly at the note of command to the other end of the field. William never knew whether Jumble would have flown at the note of command to the other end of the field; it is a question that must remain to all eternity unanswered. For no sooner had William emitted the note of command than a furious tornado dressed in a mauve suit tore down upon him, resolving itself as it became calmer into an elderly gentleman who lived in the brown house.
“You wretched little mongrel,” he said addressing William not Jumble, “you inhuman young torturer—you—you infant Nero! Do you know, I ask you, sir, that I’ve been trying to rest—to rest with this infernal row going on? What do you mean by it, you young scoundrel? What do you think you’re doing with it?—blowing it on and on and on like that. Are you trying to drive me mad?”
Before William could resist he had snatched the precious whistle from William and thrust it into his pocket. “Now I’ve got it, my boy, and I’ll keep it. And I’ll take any other infernal instrument of torture you come around here with—and get out!”
Jumble growled and made ineffective darts toward the old gentleman but finding that the old gentleman did not obligingly turn and flee with bleats of terror like the sheep, he changed his tactics and wagged his tail propitiatingly. William, aghast and infuriated, tried to gather breath for a reply but before it came the old gentleman’s roseate hue deepened to purple and he roared again:
“Get—OUT!”
William with one glance at the purple face threw dignity to the winds and got out, closely followed by the incipient sheep dog. He was ablaze with righteous indignation. He felt that he’d rather have had anything stolen from him than the precious whistle, his glorious insignia as sheep dog trainer. Stolen—yes, that was it, stolen—his whistle stolen. The man in the mauve suit ought to be in prison—a robber, that was what he was—just an ordinary robber. He—he’d go and tell someone about it so that the man in the mauve suit could be put in prison.
He told his father first and his father said: “Thank Heaven!”