She laughed like a child at the rumpled hen running with a querulous cackle into the wood-shed, and dragged the dog back to his kennel. The unruly beast tugged and resisted, snapping at the strong, girlish hand that was firmly leading him back to captivity.
This struggle for mastery might well have looked dangerous to a spectator, for the dog was vicious, savage, and large, of a strong, muscular build, and the tawny stripes on his back and sides gave him a tiger-like appearance; but he struggled and writhed in vain. With her left hand Kitty fastened the chain again into the iron ring in the side of the kennel, and then, suddenly releasing the animal, gave a backward spring; the brute rushed after her, but only succeeded in tearing off a piece of the hem of her dress.
"You villain!" she said, shaking her finger at him, and then picking up her skirt to examine the injury it had sustained. She heard hasty steps approaching from the bridge, and knew that it was the doctor returning from town, but she did not look up. She hoped he would go into the house without observing her. Perhaps he was coming from the villa in most melancholy mood. He had been so quiet and silent to-day, it almost seemed to her that with the gentle, lingering "Good-night! good-night!" of the previous evening he had meant to mark a boundary between his former and his present life.
He did not go into the house, however, but came directly towards Kitty, raising his cane at the growling, barking dog, who, thus threatened, became silent, and lay down at the door of his kennel. The doctor took a stone and hammered the link of the chain farther upon the hook. "I shall have to get rid of this brute: he is too savage and unmanageable," he said, as he threw away the stone. "His capacity as a watch-dog is not worth the terror he occasions. You, it is true, seemed to have small fear of him; I am afraid that in your consciousness of strength you might be easily led into rashness." This he said in a grave, almost reproachful tone; he had probably been a witness of the scene that had just occurred as he approached on the opposite side of the river.
She laughed. "Indeed you are wrong! I have as much capacity of terror as other girls," she replied, bravely. "Strange dogs, in particular, are my aversion, and I get out of their way whenever I can. But in critical situations there is no help for it; one must not give way to weakness; so I shut my teeth tight and take hold, and I suppose it looks very brave."