United States or Saudi Arabia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But it landed, full and effectively, on the accelerator. The powerful car responded to the touch with a bound. And it did so at the very moment that the flash of white teeth at his throat made Halding snatch his own left hand instinctively from the steering-wheel, in order to guard the threatened spot.
"You needn't worry about the effect of city life on your dog," he went on with venomous bitterness. "The pup won't have a very long spell of it. If I had my way, that man Halding would be barred from every dog-show and stuck in jail. It's an old trick of his, to buy up thoroughbreds, cheap, at shows. The bigger and the stronger they are, the more he pays for them.
Guiltily, yet gratefully, the Master led the would-be purchaser back to the benches, without attracting his wife's notice. A few minutes afterward he returned to where she and the superintendent were chatting. "Well," said the Master, trying to steel himself against his wife's possible disappointment, "I found a buyer for Bruce a Dr. Halding, from New York. He likes the pup.
Only by luck did she land on her feet instead of her head, upon the greasy pavement of the street. But she sprang forward again, with a little cry of indignant dismay, and reached desperately into the moving car for Bruce, calling him eagerly by name. Dr. Halding was steering with his left hand, while his viselike right arm still encircled the protesting collie.
Halding, with a vicious fist-lunge, sent the pup to the floor of the car in a crumpled heap, but not before the curving white eyeteeth had slashed the side of the man's throat in an ugly flesh-wound that drove its way dangerously close to the jugular.
"He isn't for sale," grinned the Doctor. "Stand clear, please. I'm starting." "You're doing nothing of the sort," was the hot reply. "You'll give back my dog! Do you understand?" For answer Halding reached again toward his self-starter. A renewed struggle from the whimpering puppy frustrated his aim and forced him to devote both hands to the subduing of Bruce.
But I'm sorry. For I'm fond of him. I'm sorry he is going to live in New York, too. A big city is no place for a big dog. I hope this Dr. Halding will be nice to the poor puppy." "Dr. WHO?" sharply queried the superintendent, who had not caught the name when the Master had spoken it in his rapid-fire speech. "Dr. Halding? Of New York? Huh!
"Also we have witness, as weel in holy writt as in profane history, of the honour in quhilk husbandrie was held of old, and how prophets have been taken from the pleugh, and great captains raised up to defend their ain countries, sic as Cincinnatus, and the like, who fought not the common enemy with the less valiancy that their alms had been exercised in halding the stilts of the pleugh, and their bellicose skill in driving of yauds and owsen.
Halding struck him roughly over the head and scrambled into the machine with him, reaching with his one disengaged hand for the self-starter button. Before he could touch it, the Mistress was on the running-board of the car. As she ran, she had opened her wristbag. Now, flinging on the runabout's seat a ten and a five-dollar bill, she demanded "Give me my dog! There is the money you paid for him!"
Halding's name, against the Mistress, as a "contributory cause" of his client's accident. The suit never came to trial. It was dropped, indeed, with much haste. Not from any change of heart on the plaintiff's behalf; but because, at that juncture, Dr. Halding chanced to be arrested and interned as a dangerous Enemy Alien.
Word Of The Day