"Hallo!" cried Tom, looking down at his feet.
"A bit fine terrier-dawg, Mister Robinson, sir," remarked the farmer; "but I'm thinking he's strayed."
At the same instant both Tray and Tom caught sight of May's anxious face peering in at the shop door. Tray rushed to his mistress with a boisterously gracious greeting, which did not include the slightest self-consciousness or sense of wrongdoing in its affability. Tom took a couple of steps after him.
"I'm afraid, Miss May, you're spoiling that dog," he said, in friendly remonstrance, before he observed who was with May, and stopped and bowed with some constraint.
"Oh! Mr. Robinson," replied May, in her volubility effacing any shy attempt at greeting on Dora's part, "I am so sorry for Tray's rudeness in going into your shop without being invited; but I do think he knew you again, I am almost sure of it," she said eagerly, as if the assurance were sufficient propitiation for any trifling lack of ceremony where a reasonable human being was concerned.
"It might have been better if I had known a little more of him," said Tom musingly, biting his moustache, as he took leave of the three.
Tray meandered down the street, followed hurriedly by his mistress and Dora. Tom looked after them, and speculated into how many more scrapes the brute would get the girls, wondered too if one of them would think she had him to thank for the infliction, and that it was an odd instance of the friendship which he had pressed her to give him in lieu of a warmer feeling. That friendship was not progressing very rapidly, though the world might consider the Millars more in need of friends than when he had begged to make one of the number. But Tom Robinson knew better. These girls were enough for themselves in any emergency. They would never fall back on friends or depend upon them. Even Dora, who had stayed at home with May, would suffer in silence and bear anything with and for her family, before she would complain or ask help.
Tray's errant fancy finally took him down a lane leading to the Dewes and to a sheltered walk between rows of yellowing elms by the side of the river. The girls were at last able to enjoy themselves. They sauntered along, talking at their ease, watching the bars of sunlight on the water, and the crowds of flies in the golden mist which the approach of sunset was drawing down over everything, and listening to a robin singing on a bough, when their misadventures for one day culminated and their worst apprehensions were fulfilled. A mongrel collie advancing in the opposite direction, with no better qualified guardian than a young servant girl, who had also a perambulator containing a couple of small children to look after, aroused the warlike spirit of Tray. He growled defiance and bristled in every hair, while Dora caught nervously at his elegant morocco collar, which burst asunder in her grasp, and May shrieked agitated soothing endearments to no purpose. What unmagnanimous cur could resist such a challenge? In another instant the inequal combat was raging furiously. The two dogs first stood on their hind legs, grappled together, and glared at each other for a second, like two pugilists trying a preliminary fall, or a couple of duellists pointing their pistols. The next moment the dogs were rolling over and over each other on the narrow path, worrying each other with the horrible snarling noise that accompanies such a performance.
May danced a frantic dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not the passion for dog-fights entertained by the gamins of the streets, such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier concerns of her life; and she had seen her master's dog get too many kicks in the ribs—a discipline from which he rose up howling but not greatly injured—to be troubled with any sensitive fears as to his safety. Besides his enemy was a small beast, a lady's dog, whom Growler could dispose of in a twinkling, if his temper were up.
"Oh! can you not call off your dog?" wailed May in her agony. "He will kill Tray. Oh! my Tray, my Tray," and she made another rush to rescue her pet.