As his teeth were about to close daintily on the cake, Cyril whipped it back out of reach; and with his other hand rapped Lad smartly across the nose.
Had any grown man ventured a humiliating and painful trick of that sort on Lad, the collie would have been at the tormentor's throat, on the instant.

But it was not in the great dog's nature to attack a child.
Shrinking back, in amaze, his abnormally sensitive feelings jarred, the collie retreated majestically to his beloved "cave" under the music-room piano.
To the Mistress's remonstrance, Cyril denied most earnestly that he had done the thing.

Nor was his vehemently tearful denial shaken by her assertion that she had seen it all.
Lad soon forgave the affront.

And he forgave a dozen other and worse mal-treatments which followed.

But, at last, the dog took to shunning the neighborhood of the pest.