"Don't, May, you'll be bitten," implored Dora.
"He don't mind me, miss, not one bit, our Growler don't," said the composed damsel, as if Growler's indifference were rather a feather in his cap.
Alas! for any attention that the victim paid to May's desperate remonstrances. She had in fact no right to reproach the enemy's temporary proprietress for her lack of authority over her four-footed companion. But poor May in her misery was neither logical nor just. She turned on the other with a passionate challenge, "What business have you to bring out a horrid brute like that, which you cannot master, to kill other people's dear little pets?"
"Hush, hush, May," besought Dora, "I think they are leaving off." There was a slight cessation in the hostilities. "The noise you are making may set them on again."
"It were your dog as begun it." Growler's sponsor defended both herself and Growler defiantly.
"Oh!" screamed May, "they're at it again. Tray is down and the cruel monster is at his throat. Will nobody help us? Will nobody save my poor little dog?"
The girls were carrying neither sunshades nor umbrellas. They could not reach the lower boughs of the trees to pull down a switch, but just as May was springing forward to dare the worst herself, sooner than see Tray perish unaided before her eyes, Dora caught sight of a large half-loose stone in the path. "Stand back, May," she gasped, as she tore it up. Dora's face was as white as paper; she was sick with fright and distress; she would fain have shut her eyes if she had not known that she needed every advantage which sight could give her to prevent her hitting Tray, instead of his foe, as the two rolled over each other in the struggle which was growing deadlier every second.
"Stop," cried a voice of command behind her, "you'll have the dog turn upon you as soon as he has finished his present job," and a welcome deliverer ran forward just in time. He seized the first tail he could grasp—luckily for him it was Tray's and not Growler's—and hung on to it like a vice. The "redder" of the combatants, regardless of "the redder's lick," which was likely to be his portion, continued to hold the tail of the now yelling Tray, and at the same time seized him by the scruff of the neck with the other hand, and dragged both animals, still locked together, with his whole force nearer and nearer to the edge of the bank by the river.
A new terror beset May. "Take care, you'll have them in the water."
No sooner said than done. With a plunge the two dogs fell heavily into the Dewes, while the man who had brought them to this pass kept his own footing with difficulty.