The fiercely silent charge was changed in a trice to a coldly civil touching of noses, and the majestic wagging of a plumy tail. After which, side by side, the two collies--big and little--old and new--walked up to the veranda, to be petted by the humans who had so amusedly watched their encounter.
"See!" exclaimed the Mistress, in triumph. "Lad has accepted her. He vouches for her. That ought to be enough for any one!"
Thus it was that La.s.s found a home.
As she never yet had been taught to know her name, she learned readily to respond to the t.i.tle of "Princess." And for several months life went on evenly and happily for her.
Indeed, life was always wondrous pleasant, there at The Place,--for humans and for animals alike. A fire-blue lake bordered the grounds on two sides. Behind stretched the forest. And on every side arose the soft green mountains, hemming in and brooding over The Place as though they loved it. In the winter evenings there was the huge library hearth with its blaze and warmth; and a disreputable fur rug in front of it that might have been ordained expressly for tired dogs to drowse on.
And there were the Mistress and the Master. Especially the Mistress!
The Mistress somehow had a way of making all the world seem worth while.
Then, of a morning, when La.s.s was just eleven months old, two things happened.
The Mistress and the Master went down to her kennel after breakfast.
La.s.s did not run forth to greet them as usual. She lay still, wagging her tail in feeble welcome as they drew near. But she did not get up.
Crowding close to her tawny side was a tiny, shapeless creature that looked more like a fat blind rat than like anything else. It was a ten-hour-old collie pup--a male, and yellowish brown of hue.
"That"s the climax!" complained the Master, breaking in on the Mistress"s rhapsodies. "Here we"ve been planning to start a kennel of home-bred collies! And see what results we get! One solitary puppy! Not once in ten times are there less than six in a collie-litter. Sometimes there are a dozen. And here the dog you wheedled me into keeping has just one! I expected at least seven."
"If it"s a freak to be the only puppy in a litter," answered the Mistress, refusing to part with her enthusiasm over the miracle, "then this one ought to bring us luck. Let"s call him "Bruce." You remember, the original Bruce won because of the mystic number, seven. This Bruce has got to make up to us for the seven puppies that weren"t born. See how proud she is of him! Isn"t she a sweet little mother?"
The second of the morning"s events was a visit from the foreman of the Rothsay Kennels, who motored across to The Place, intent on clearing up a mystery.
"The Boss found a collie yesterday, tied in the front yard of a negro cabin a mile or two from our kennels," he told the Master. "He recognized her right away as Rothsay Princess. The negro claims to have found her wandering around near the railroad tracks, one night, six months ago. Now, what"s the answer?"
"The answer," said the Master, "is that your boss is mistaken. I"ve had Rothsay Princess for the past six months. And she"s the last dog I"ll ever get from the Rothsay Kennels. I was stung, good and plenty, on that deal.
"My wife wanted to keep her, or I"d have made a kick in the courts for having to pay two hundred dollars for a cheeky, apple-domed, p.r.i.c.k eared--"
"p.r.i.c.k-eared!" exclaimed the foreman, aghast at the volleyed sacrilege.
"Rothsay Princess has the best ears of any pup we"ve bred since Champion Rothsay Chief. Not a flaw in that pup. She--"
"Not a flaw, hey!" sniffed the Master. "Come down to the kennel and take a look at her. She has as many flaws as a street-cur has fleas."
He led the way to the kennel. At sight of the stranger La.s.s growled and showed her teeth. For a collie mother will let n.o.body but proven friends come near to her newborn brood.
The foreman stared at the hostile young mother for a half-minute, whistling bewilderedly between his teeth. Then he laughed aloud.
"That"s no more Rothsay Princess than I am!" he declared. "I know who she IS, though. I"d remember that funny mask among a million. That"s Rothsay La.s.s! Though how she got HERE--!
"We couldn"t have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on, confused. "For we"d sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is. I don"t get the point of this thing, from any angle. But we run our kennels on the square.
And I can promise the boss"ll either send back your check or send Rothsay Princess to you and take La.s.s back."
Two days later, while all The Place was still mulling over the mystery, a letter came for the Master from La.s.s"s home town. It was signed "Edw"d Hazen," and it was written on the cheap stationery of his employer"s bottling works. It read:
Dear Sir:
"Six months ago, my son bought a dog from the Rothsay Kennels. It was a she-dog, and his ma and I didn"t want one around. So I put it aboard a freight-car on the sly. My boy went sick over losing his dog. He has never rightly got over it, but he peaks and mopes and gets thinner all the time. If I had known how hard he was going to take it, I would of cut off my hand before I would of done such a thing. And my wife feels just like I do about it. We would both of us have given a hundred dollars to get the dog back for him, when we saw how bad he felt. But it was too late. Somehow or other it is most generally too late when a rotten thing has been done.
"To-day he went again to the Rothsay Kennels to ask if she had come back. He has always been hoping she would. And they told him you have her. Now, sir, I am a poor man, but if one hundred dollars will make you sell me that dog, I"ll send it to you in a money order by return mail. It will be worth ten times that much, to my wife and me, to have d.i.c.k happy again. I inclose a stamp. Will you let me know?"
Six weeks afterward The Place"s car brought d.i.c.k Hazen across to receive his long-lost pet.
The boy was thinner and shakier and whiter than when he had gone to sleep with his cherished puppy curled against his narrow chest. But there was a light in his eyes and an eagerness in his heart that had not been there in many a long week.
La.s.s was on the veranda to welcome him. And as d.i.c.k scrambled out of the car and ran to pick her up, she came more than half-way to meet him. With a flurry of fast-pattering steps and a bark of eager welcome, she flung herself upon her long-vanished master. For a highbred collie does not forget. And at first glimpse of the boy La.s.s remembered him.
d.i.c.k caught her up in his arms--a harder feat than of yore, because of her greater weight and his own sapped strength,--and hugged her tight to his breast. Winking very fast indeed to disperse tears that had no place in the eyes of a self-contained man of twelve, he sputtered rapturously:
"I KNEW I"d find you, La.s.sie--I knew it all the time;--even the times when I was deadsure I wouldn"t! Gee, but you"ve grown, though! And you"re beautifuler than ever. Isn"t she, Miss?" he demanded, turning to the Mistress with instinctive knowledge that here at least he would find confirmation. "Indeed she is!" the Mistress a.s.sured him.
"And see how glad she is to be with you again! She--"
"And Dad says she can stay with me, for keeps!" exulted d.i.c.k. "He says he"ll put a new lock on the cellar door, so she can"t ever push out again, the way she did, last time. But I guess she"s had her lesson in going out for walks at night and not being able to find her way back.
She and I are going to have the dandiest times together, that ever happened. Aren"t we, La.s.s? Is that her little boy?" he broke off, in eager curiosity, as the Master appeared from the kennels, carrying Bruce.
The puppy was set down on the veranda floor for d.i.c.k"s inspection.
"He"s cunning, isn"t he? Kind of like a Teddy Bear,--the sort kids play with. But," with a tinge of worry, "I"m not sure Ma will let me keep two. Maybe--"
"Perhaps," suggested the Mistress, "perhaps you"d like us to keep little Bruce, to remember La.s.s by? We"ll try to make him very happy."
"Yes"m!" agreed d.i.c.k, in much haste, his brow clearing from a mental vision of Mrs. Hazen"s face when she should see him return with twice as many dogs as he had set out for. "Yes"m. If you wouldn"t mind, very much. S"pose we leave it that way? I guess Bruce"ll like being with you, Miss. I--I guess pretty near anybody would. You"ll--you"ll try not to be too homesick for La.s.s, won"t you?"
On the steps of the veranda the downy and fat puppy watched his mother"s departure with no especial interest. By the Mistress"s wish, Mr. Hazen had not been required to make any part of his proffered hundred-dollar payment for the return of his boy"s pet. All the Mistress had stipulated was that La.s.s might be allowed to remain at The Place until baby Bruce should no longer need her.
"Bruce," said the Mistress as the car rolled up the drive and out of sight, "you are the sole visible result of The Place"s experiment in raising prize collies. You have a tremendous responsibility on those fat little shoulders of yours,--to live up to it all."
By way of showing his scorn for such trifles as a "tremendous responsibility," Bruce proceeded to make a ferocious onslaught at the Mistress"s temperamental gray Persian kitten, "Tipperary," which was picking a mincing way across the veranda.
A howl of pain and two scratches on his tiny nose immediately followed the attack. Tipperary then went on with her mincing promenade. And Bruce, with loud lamentations, galloped to the shelter of the Mistress"s skirt.
"Poor little chap!" soothed the Mistress, picking him up and comforting him. "Responsibility isn"t such a joke, after all, is it, Baby?"
CHAPTER II. The Pest
Thackeray, as a lad, was dropped from college for laziness and for gambling. Bismarck failed to get a University degree, because he lacked power to study and because he preferred midnight beer to midnight oil.
George Washington, in student days, could never grasp the simplest rules of spelling. The young Lincoln loved to sprawl in the shade with fish-pole or tattered book, when he should have been working.
Now, these men were giants--physically as well as mentally. Being giants, they were by nature slow of development.
The kitten, at six months of age, is graceful and compact and of perfect poise. The lion-cub, at the same age, is a gawky and foolish and ill-knit ma.s.s of legs and fur; deficient in sense and in symmetry.
Yet at six years, the lion and the cat are not to be compared for power or beauty or majesty or brain, or along any other lines.
The foregoing is not an essay on the slow development of the Great. It is merely a condensation of the Mistress"s earnest arguments against the selling or giving away of a certain hopelessly awkward and senseless and altogether undesirable collie pup named Bruce.