Chapter 4: Purl to MarkerRalph couldn’t help it. He had to laugh. And he couldn’t even stop. It was too fantastic watching Simon trying to explain to the dogs why they couldn’t come into their bed for the night. He spoke to them as though they were sentient beings, and they reacted like sentient beings would, namely by ignoring him. They had made up their mind, and they dismissed Simon’s reasoning off-hand.
That wasn’t even why Ralph was laughing, though. He was laughing, because for all his stern words and desperate demeanour, Simon really, truly was at the mercy of those dogs. He pretended for all the world to hate them, to loathe their shedding, their slobbering, their foul breath, and he could fool pretty much everyone—except the dogs. Niamh and Oisin knew that deep down inside Simon
