As for Jan, it would not be easy nor yet quite fair to analyze his
feelings toward the wall-eyed sheep-dog. Jan's mind, like his big frame,
was not yet half developed. It may be that he could never be quite so
fine a gentleman as his sire; and in any case it were foolish to look
for old heads on puppy shoulders. He did not think at all when he saw
Grip. But in that instant he tugged at his collar, without conscious
volition, just as his hackles rose, just as sharp consciousness
penetrated every part of him, of the wounds he had sustained under
Grip's punishing jaws. It was not malice, but a sudden heady rush in his
veins of the lust of combat, that kept his thick coat so erectly
bristling, the soft skin about his nostrils wrinkling so actively, for
several minutes after his recognition of the sheep-dog. Unlike Grip, it
might be that Jan would, as he developed, learn easily to forgive; but
it was already tolerably obvious that he was not of the stuff of which
those dogs who forget are made.

"They don't forget the affair in the lane, either of them," said the
Master, with a smile, after the wagonette had started. It may be Jan
understood the words had reference to his first fight. In any case, he
looked eagerly up into the Master's face, and from that to Betty's; and
in that moment he was living over again through the strenuous rounds of
his struggle with Grip.

"Silly old Jan," said Betty, as her hand smoothed his head
affectionately.

"Truculent infant," laughed the Master. "Take note of the easy
sedateness of your father in the road there." (The round trot of the
Nuthill horses--and they frequently did the trip to the station in
twenty-five minutes--was no more than a comfortable amble for Finn.)