The pedlar, who was by no means pleased with this outrage against his cur, now interfered.
“Don’t lick my dorrg, ma’am, in that ere sort o’ fashun. What harm can that hanimal ha’ done to you, or that whiskered cat-like thing o’ yourn?”
“Hold your impertinent tongue, fellow! or I’ll thrash you, too,” cried Miss Wilhelmina, flourishing aloft her cane.
The man eyed her sullenly. “Maybe, you’d beest not try. If you warn’t a ’uman I’d give it to ’un.”
“A lady, sir,” with great dignity, and drawing herself up to her full height.
“Ladies don’t act in that ere way. You be but a ’uman, and a mad yun, too; that be what you be’s.”
The next moment Lyndsay expected the cane to descend upon the pedlar’s head, and was ready to rush to the rescue of the fair Wilhelmina. But no; the lady dropped her cane, burst into a loud fit of laughter, stooped down, patted the offended cur, and, slipping a shilling into the hand of the angry countryman, snatched Muff to her capacious bosom, and walked off at full trot.
The pedlar, looking after her for a minute, with his eyes and mouth wide open in blank astonishment, and then down at the silver glittering in his hand, cried out,—
“I knows you bees a lady now. If you delights in licking o’ do’rrgs, ma’am, you ma’ thrash Bull as much as you please for sixpence a licking. That’s fair, I thinks.”
He might as well have shouted to the winds; Miss Wilhelmina was out of hearing, and Flora and her husband pursued their walk to the hall.