“Rough,” who had accompanied farmer Greening all the way from England, had mysteriously disappeared the morning of their arrival; he could not be found before they had quitted the ship, and they had since been unable to discover him.
“That is curious,” said the doctor; “for this morning, when I bought the sheep, a man offered me a shepherd’s dog for sale. I told him that should he not in the meantime have found a purchaser, I would treat with him in the evening after I had seen the dog. Should he prove to be ‘Rough,’ I will not fail to purchase him.”
Tobias, on hearing this, was very eager to accompany Dr Fraser.
“The old dog will know me among a thousand, and the man will have a hard job to hold him in,” he observed, grinning from ear to ear.
The doctor, after he had seen Waihoura, told Lucy she need have no further anxiety about her friend, who only required good food and care completely to recover.
“I must get Mr Marlow to see her father, and persuade him to allow her to remain with you, and he may assure him very truly that she will probably fall ill again if she goes back again to her own people,” he said.
Tobias accompanied the doctor into the town in the hopes of hearing about his favourite “Rough.” He had not been long absent, when back he came with his shaggy friend at his heels.
“Here he is mother, here he is Master Harry,” he shouted. “I know’d how it would be, the moment he caught sight of me, he almost toppled the man who held him down on his nose, and so he would if the rope hadn’t broken, and in another moment he was licking me all over. The doctor gave the man a guinea; but I said it was a shame for him to take it, and so did everybody, for they saw that the dog knew me among twenty or thirty standing round. The man sneaked off, and ‘Rough’ came along with me. Now I must go back and bring the sheep round here to the foot of the hill. There’s some ground the surveyor says that we may put them on till we can take them to our own run, but we must give ‘Rough’ his dinner first, for I’ll warrant the fellow has not fed him over well.”
“Rough” wagged his stump of a tail to signify he understood his young master’s kind intentions, and Mrs Greening soon got a mess ready, which “Rough” swallowed up in a few moments, and looked up into Toby’s face, as much as to say, “what do you want with me next?”
“Come along ‘Rough,’ I’ll show you,” said Toby, as he set off at a round trot down the hill.