Further Adventures of Lad | Page 5

so touched by
Lad's friendliness that he'll not only spare our house but lead an upright
life ever after. I--"
"Don't send him back!" she pleaded. "He'll grow up, soon, and--"
"And if only the courteous burglars will wait till he's a couple of years
old," suggested the Master, "he--"
Set gently on the floor by the Mistress, Laddie had crossed to where the
Master stood. The man, glancing down, met the puppy's gaze. For an
instant he scowled at the miniature watchdog, so ludicrously different
from the ferocious brute he had expected. Then,--for some queer
reason,--he stooped and ran his hand roughly over the tawny coat,
letting it rest at last on the shapely head that did not flinch or wriggle at
his touch.
"All right," be decreed. "Let him stay. He'll be an amusing pet for you,
anyhow. And his eye has the true thoroughbred expression,--'the look
of eagles.' He may amount to something after all. Let him stay. We'll
take a chance on burglars."
So it was that Lad came to the Place. So it was that he demanded and
received due welcome which was ever Lad's way. The Master had been
right about the pup's proving "an amusing pet," for the Mistress. From
that first hour, Lad was never willingly out of her sight. He had adopted
her. The Master, too,--in only a little lesser wholeheartedness,--he
adopted. Toward the rest of the world, from the first, he was friendly
but more or less indifferent.
Almost at once, his owners noted an odd trait in the dog's nature. He

would of course get into any or all of the thousand mischief-scrapes
which are the heritage of puppies. But, a single reproof was enough to
cure him forever of the particular form of mischief which had just been
chidden. He was one of those rare dogs that learn the Law by instinct;
and that remember for all time a command or a prohibition once given
them.
For example:--On his second day at the Place, he made a furious rush at
a neurotic mother hen and her golden convoy of chicks. The
Mistress,--luckily for all concerned,--was within call. At her sharp
summons the puppy wheeled, midway in his charge, and trotted back to
her. Severely, yet trying not to laugh at his worried aspect, she scolded
Lad for his misdeed.
An hour later, as Lad was scampering ahead of her, past the stables,
they rounded a corner and came flush upon the same nerve-wrecked
hen and her brood. Lad halted in his scamper, with a suddenness that
made him skid. Then, walking as though on eggs, he made an
idiotically wide circle about the feathered dam and her silly chicks.
Never thereafter did he assail any of the Place's fowls.
It was the same, when he sprang up merrily at a line of laundry,
flapping in alluring invitation from the drying ground lines. A single
word of rebuke,--and thenceforth the family wash was safe from him.
And so on with the myriad perplexing "Don'ts" which spatter the career
of a fun-loving collie pup. Versed in the patience-fraying ways of pups
in general, the Mistress and the Master marveled and bragged and
praised.
All day and every day, life was a delight to the little dog. He had
friends everywhere, willing to romp with him. He had squirrels to
chase, among the oaks. He had the lake to splash ecstatically in: He had
all he wanted to eat; and he had all the petting his hungry little heart
could crave.
He was even allowed, with certain restrictions, to come into the
mysterious house itself. Nor, after one defiant bark at a leopard-skin
rug, did he molest anything therein. In the house, too, he found a
genuine cave:--a wonderful place to lie and watch the world at large,
and to stay cool in and to pretend he was a wolf. The cave was the deep
space beneath the piano in the music room. It seemed to have a peculiar
charm to Lad. To the end of his days, by the way, this cave was his

chosen resting place. Nor, in his lifetime, did any other dog set foot
therein.
So much for "all day and every day." But the nights were different.
Lad hated the nights. In the first place, everybody went to bed and left
him alone. In the second, his hard-hearted owners made him sleep on a
fluffy rug in a corner of the veranda instead of in his delectable
piano-cave. Moreover, there was no food at night. And there was
nobody to play with or to go for walks with or to listen to. There was
nothing but gloom and silence and dullness. When a puppy takes fifty
cat-naps in the course of the day, he cannot always be expected