"Look here, Dick, my fine fellow, don't you want a dog? Here's Rover, the very chap for you."
"May I have Rover?" eagerly asked Dick, his eyes glistening with delight.
"He fights well!" ejaculated Dick, surveying the dog proudly. As he did so, the animal, seeing himself noticed, walked up to Dick, and rubbed himself against the lad familiarly.
"He'll whip any dog in the neighbourhood," said Mr. Acres.
"Here, Rover! Here, Rover! Here! Here! Here!" cried Dick in an animated tone, starting off. The dog followed quickly, and in a few moments both were out of sight.
"A smart chap that," remarked Mr. Acres to himself, as Dick bounded away. "He'll make something before he dies, I'll warrant."
The possession of the dog and half-dollar, especially the latter, were strongly objected to by Dick's mother.
"How could you, my son, think of robbing a poor bird of her little young ones?" said she seriously and reprovingly.
"But, mother, Mr. Acres wanted me to get him a bird, and of course I could not say 'no.' What would he have thought of me?"
"But if it had been so very wrong, Mr. Acres never would have asked me to do it, I know," urged Dick.
Mrs. Lawson would have compelled her son to take back the money he had received, if almost any other person in the village but Mr. Acres had been concerned. But he was well off, and influential; and, moreover, was her landlord; and, though she was behindhand with her rent, he never took the trouble to ask for it. The dog, too, would have been sent back if any one but Mr. Acres had given it to her son. As it was, she contented herself with merely reprimanding Dick for robbing the bird's nest, and enjoining on him not to be guilty of so cruel an act again.
About three days after this event, Dick, accompanied by Rover--now his inseparable companion--met his young friend, Henry Jones, who had with him his father's large house-dog, Bose.
"Not now he isn't. Mr. Acres gave him to me."
"I thought he promised you half-a-dollar?"
"So he did; and what is more, gave it to me, and Rover into the bargain."
"Well, I wouldn't have robbed a bird's nest for a dozen Rovers," said Henry Jones, warmly.
"Wouldn't you, indeed?" returned Dick, with a sneer.
"Oh, you're very pious! But Rover can whip your Bose, anyhow."