Page:On Our Selection.djvu/223

Rh him well. A pure lie, but an old favourite of Dad's, and one that never failed to make Joe laugh. He laughed now. And such a laugh!—a loud, mirthless, merciless noise. No one else joined in, though Miss Eibbone smiled a little. When Joe recovered he held out his plate.

"More pumpkin, Dad."

"If—what, sir?" Dad was prompting him in manners.

"If?" and Joe laughed again. "Who said 'if?—I never."

Just then Miss Ribbone sprang to her feet, knocking over the box she had been sitting on, and stood for a time as though she had seen a ghost. We stared at her. "Oh," she murmured at last, "it was the dog! It gave me such a fright!"

Mother sympathised with her and seated her again, and Dad fixed his eye on Joe.

"Did n't I tell you," he said, "to keep that useless damned mongrel of a dog outside the house altogether—eh?—did n't I? Go this moment and tie the brute up, you vagabond!"

"I did tie him up, but he chewed the greenhide."

"Be off with you, you" (Dad coughed suddenly and scattered fragments of meat and munched pumpkin about the table) "at once, and do as I tell you, you"

"That'll do, Father—that'll do," Mother said gently, and Joe took Stump out to the barn and kicked him, and hit him