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“Oh, dear!” gasped Miss Wiggin, trying to suppress her mirth. “If you only realized how ridiculous it is! Old Shep couldn’t hurt a sick kitten.”

“Huh!” grunted the stranger skeptically. “Perhaps not, but he certainly showed a strong desire to plant a few teeth in any part of my person that he could reach.”

Miss Wiggin continued to laugh. “It would have to be a few teeth, as he’s lost almost all that he ever had, and he’s so old that he’s half deaf and getting blind. That’s why he didn’t warn me that you were coming. If you hadn’t shown that you were scared, he’d never have made an offer to touch you.”

“How was I to know that?” demanded the man on the limb, flushing. “On such short notice I couldn’t tell whether he was a senile and harmless old dog or a young and savage one bent on making a meal off my person.”

“You’re an awful coward, aren’t you?” asked the girl, rising to her feet and regarding him with open contempt.

She was slender, willowy, and graceful. He considered that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, and he wondered how, even with the sunbonnet hiding her face, he had made the blunder of mistaking her for a middle-aged woman. He felt his heart thumping queerly. He also felt his face burning beneath her unmasked disdain.