The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
Children's literature
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small
thoroughbred, white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large
shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with.
They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in
great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the
sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding,
however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob
called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor
Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a
brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have
liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a
crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance; it was no use
kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer.
Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible
ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried
for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd.
"Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle aged man,
more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might.
This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring
shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered
a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
friend--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of
snuff!" observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an
eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd,
affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes
the buck, but with more urgency; whereupon were produced several
open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he
took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the
Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the
Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free.
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.
But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he
grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in
Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off.
The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him; down Niddry
street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob
and I, and our small men, panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South bridge is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland
bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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