was turned, the pup had sneaked into the kitchen.
It was not a large kitchen, and Job was distinctly a large dog. Also,
he was suspicious of further assaults with the fire shovel and had
endeavored to find a hiding place under the table. In crawling beneath
this article of furniture he had knocked off a sheet of the fly paper.
This had fallen "butter side down" upon his back, and stuck fast. He
reached aft to pull it loose with his teeth and had encountered a
second sheet laid on a chair. This had stuck to his neck. Job was an
apprehensive animal by nature and as the result of experience, and his
nerves were easily unstrung. He forgot the shovel, forgot the human whom
he had been fearfully trying to propitiate, forgot everything except the
dreadful objects which clung to him and pulled his hair. He rolled from
beneath the table, a shrieking, kicking, snapping cyclone. And that
kitchen was no place for a cyclone.
He rolled and whirled for an instant, then scrambled to his feet and
began running in widening circles. Brown tried to seize him as he
passed, but he might as well have seized a railroad train. Another
chair, also loaded with fly paper, upset, and Job added a third sheet to
his collection. This one plastered itself across his nose and eyes. He
ceased running forward and began to leap high in the air and backwards.
The net containing the big lobster fell to the floor. Then John Brown
fled to the open air, leaned against the side of the building and
screamed with laughter.
Inside the kitchen the uproar was terrific. Howls, shrill yelps, thumps
and crashes. Then came a crash louder than any preceding it, a splash of
water across the sill, and from the doorway leaped, or flew, an object
steaming and dripping, fluttering with fly paper, and with a giant
lobster clamped firmly to its tail. The lobster was knocked off against
the door post, but the rest of the exhibit kept on around the corner of
the house, shrieking as it flew. Brown collapsed in the sand and laughed
until his sides ached and he was too weak to laugh longer.
At last he got up and staggered after it. He was still laughing when
he reached the back yard, but there he stopped laughing and uttered an
exclamation of impatience and some alarm.
Of Job there was no sign, though from somewhere amid the dunes sounded
yelps, screams and the breaking of twigs as the persecuted one fled
blindly through the bayberry and beachplum bushes. But Brown was not
an
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