“Come, we will go in the house and have this tied up,” said Anderson.

But Eddy rebelled.  “I don’t want a lot of women fussing over a little thing like this,” said he, stoutly.  “It isn’t anything at all.”

“No, it is not very serious, but all the same it had better be tied up, and I have something I want to put on it.  I tell you what we will do.  We will go around the back way.  I will take you in the kitchen door and up the backstairs to my room, and doctor it unknown to anybody.”

“I don’t want Charlotte to know anything about it; she will be just silly enough to faint away again.  Girls always do make such an awful fuss over nothing,” said Eddy.

“All right,” said Anderson.  “Come along, my boy.”

Anderson started, and the boy followed, but suddenly he stopped and ran back before Anderson dreamed what he was about.  He stopped in front of the kennel, and danced on obviously trembling legs a dance of defiance before the frantic dog.

Anderson grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Come at once,” he said, quite sternly.

Eddy obeyed at once.  “All right,” he said.  “I just wanted him to see I wasn’t afraid of him, that was all.”

Eddy and Anderson entered the house through the kitchen door, ascended the backstairs noiselessly, and gained Anderson’s room, where the wound was bound up after an application of a stinging remedy which the boy bore without flinching, although it was considerably more painful than the bite itself.  He looked soberly down at his arm, now turning black and blue from the bruise of the dog’s teeth, beside the inflamed spots where they had actually entered, while Anderson applied the violent remedy.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I was to blame.  I ought to have minded you.”

“Yes, I suppose you ought, my son,” assented Anderson, continuing to handle the wound gently.

“And I suppose that is an exclusive dog.  He doesn’t like everybody going right up to him.  Say, I guess he is a pretty smart dog, but I guess I should rather be his master than anybody else.  He never bit you, did he?”

“No.”

“I should think he would be an awful nice watch-dog,” said Eddy.

Anderson bound the arm tightly and smoothly with a bandage.  When the arm was finally dressed the jacket-sleeve could go over it, much to Eddy’s satisfaction.

“Say, this jacket ain’t paid for,” he said.  “Isn’t it lucky that the man where Amy bought it didn’t know we didn’t have much money to pay for things lately and trusted us.  If I had on my old jacket, the sleeves were so short and tight, because I had outgrown it, you know, I’d been hurt a good deal worse, and it was lucky we hadn’t paid the Chinaman, too.  It was real—­ What do you call it?”

“I don’t know what you mean?” said Anderson, smiling.

“It was real—­ Oh, shucks! you know.  What is it folks say when they don’t go on a railroad train, and there’s an accident, and everybody that did go is killed.  You know.”