He was not a bit like the other puppies ; if any one 

 fired off a gun or cracked one of the big whips the 

 whole five would yell at the top of their voices and, 

 wherever they were, would start running, scrambling 

 and floundering as fast as they could towards the 

 waggon without once looking back to see what they 

 were running away from. The odd puppy would drop 

 his bone with a start or would jump round ; his ears 

 and tail would flicker up and down for a second ; 

 then he would slowly bristle up all over, and with his 

 head cocked first on one side and then on the other, 

 stare hard with his half-blind bluish puppy eyes in 

 the direction of the noise ; but he never ran away. 



And so, little by little, I got to like him in spite of 

 his awful ugliness. And it really was awful ! The 

 other puppies grew big all over, but the odd one 

 at that time seemed to grow only in one part his 

 tummy ! The poor little chap was born small and 

 weak ; he had always been bullied and crowded out 

 by the others, and the truth is he was half starved. 

 The natural consequence of this was that as soon 

 as he could walk about and pick up things for himself 

 he made up for lost time, and filled up his middle 

 piece to an alarming size before the other parts of 

 his body had time to grow ; at that time he looked 

 more like a big tock-tockie beetle than a dog. 



Besides the balloon-like tummy he had stick-out 

 bandy-legs, very like a beetle's too, and a neck so thin 

 that it made the head look enormous, and you wondered 

 how the neck ever held it up. But what made him so 

 supremely ridiculous was that he evidently did not 



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