subdued--incapable even of meditating revenge. But when they entered
the nursery, the dog, taking Tommy for a worse sort of rat, made a
leap at him right off the bed, as if he would swallow him alive, and
the start and the terror of it brought him quite to himself again.

"Quiet, Abdiel!" said Clare.

The dog turned, jumped up on the bed, and lay down again close to the
baby.

Clare, who, I have said, was in old days a reader of _Paradise Lost_,
had already given him the name of _Abdiel_.

"Please, I couldn't help yelling!" said Tommy, very meekly. "I didn't
know you'd got _him_!"

"I know you couldn't help it!" answered Clare. "What have you had to
eat to-day?"

"Nothing but a beastly turnip and a wormy beet," said Tommy. "I'm
awful hungry."

"You'd have had something better if you'd stuck by the baby, and not
left her to the rats!"

"There ain't no rats," growled Tommy.

"Will you believe your own eyes?" returned Clare, and showed him the
skin of the rat Abdiel had slain. "I've a great mind to make you eat
it!" he added, dangling it before him by the tail.