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.