“That will do, Dick!” broke in his shocked mother.  “Take her away.”

“I won’t,” said the boy, speaking very slowly, and with no excitement at all.

A slap on the side of his head, from his mother’s punitive palm, made him stagger a little.  Her hand was upraised for a second installment of rebellion-quelling—­when a slender little body flashed through the air and landed heavily against her chest.  A set of white puppy-teeth all but grazed her wrathful red face.

Lass, who never before had known the impulse to attack, had jumped to the rescue of the beaten youngster whom she had adopted as her god.  The woman screeched in terror.  Dick flung an arm about the furry whirlwind that was seeking to avenge his punishment, and pulled the dog back to his side.

Mrs. Hazen’s shriek, and the obbligato accompaniment of the washerwoman, made an approaching man quicken his steps as he strolled around the side of the house.  The newcomer was Dick’s father, superintendent of the local bottling works.  On his way home to lunch, he walked in on a scene of hysteria.

“Kill her, sir!” bawled the washerwoman, at sight of him.  “Kill her!  She’s a mad dog.  She just tried to kill Miz’ Hazen!”

“She didn’t do anything of the kind!” wailed Dick.  “She was pertecting me.  Ma hit me; and Lass—­”

“Ed!” tearily proclaimed Mrs. Hazen, “if you don’t send for a policeman to shoot that filthy beast, I’ll—­”

“Hold on!” interrupted the man, at a loss to catch the drift of these appeals, by reason of their all being spoken in a succession so rapid as to make a single blurred sentence.  “Hold on!  What’s wrong?  And where did the pup come from?  He’s a looker, all right a cute little cuss.  What’s the row?”

With the plangently useless iterations of a Greek chorus, the tale was flung at him, piecemeal and in chunks, and in a triple key.  When presently he understood, Hazen looked down for a moment at the puppy—­which was making sundry advances of a shy but friendly nature toward him.  Then he looked at the boy, and noted Dick’s hero-effort to choke back the onrush of babyish sobs.  And then, with a roughly tolerant gesture, he silenced the two raucous women, who were beginning the tale over again for the third time.

“I see,” he said.  “I see.  I see how it is.  Needn’t din it at me any more, folks.  And I see Dicky’s side of it, too.  Yes, and I see the pup’s side of it.  I know a lot about dogs.  That pup isn’t vicious.  She knows she belongs to Dick.  You lammed into him, and she took up and defended him.  That’s all there is to the ’mad-dog’ part of it.”

“But Ed—­” sputtered his wife.