outside the door of her bedroom. In preference even to a romp through the forest with Lady, he would pace majestically alongside the invalid's wheelchair as it was trundled along the walks or up and down the veranda.Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the Master's seat, at meals--a place that had been his alone since puppyhood--he lay always behind the Baby's table couch. This to the vast discomfort of the maid who had to step over him in circumnavigating the board, and to the open annoyance of the child's mother.
Baby, as the days went on, lost none of her first pleasure in her shaggy playmate. To her, the dog was a ceaseless novelty. She loved
to twist and braid the great white ruff on his chest, to toy with his sensitive ears, to make him "speak" or shake hands or lie down or stand up at her bidding.[Pg 56] She loved to play a myriad of intricate games with him--games ranging from Beauty and the Beast,
to Fairy Princess and Dragon.
Whether as Beast (to her Beauty) or in the more complex and exacting role of Dragon, Lad entered wholesouledly into every such game. Of course, he always played his part wrong. Equally, of course, Baby always lost her temper at his stupidity, and pummeled him, by way of chastisement, with her nerveless fists--a punishment Lad accepted with a grin of idiotic bliss.
Whether because of the keenly bracing mountain air or because of her outdoor days with a chum who awoke her dormant interest in life, Baby was growing stronger and less like a sallow ghostling. And, in the relief of noting this steady improvement, her mother continued to tolerate Lad's chumship with the child, although she had never lost her own first unreasoning fear of the big dog.
Two or three things happened to revive this foolish dread. One of them occurred about a week after the invalid's arrival at The Place. Lady, being no fonder of guests than was Lad, had given the veranda and the house itself a wide berth. But one day, as Baby lay in
the hammock (trying in a wordy irritation to teach Lad the alphabet), and as the guest sat with her back to them, writing letters, Lady
trotted around the corner of the porch.
At sight of the hammock's queer occupant, she[Pg 57] paused, and stood blinking inquisitively. Baby spied the graceful gold-and- white creature. Pushing Lad to one side, she called, imperiously:
"Come here, new Doggie. You pretty, pretty Doggie!"
Lady, her vanity thus appealed to, strolled mincingly forward. Just within arm's reach, she halted again. Baby thrust out one hand, and seized her by the ruff to draw her into petting-distance.
The sudden tug on Lady's fur was as nothing to the haulings and maulings in which Lad so meekly reveled. But Lad and Lady were by no means alike, as I think I have said. Boundless patience and a chivalrous love for the Weak, were not numbered among Lady's erratic virtues. She liked liberties as little as did Lad; and she had a far more drastic way of resenting them.
At the first pinch of her sensitive skin there was an instant flash of gleaming teeth, accompanied by a nasty growl and a lightning-quick forward lunge of the dainty gold-white head. As the wolf slashes at a foe--and as no animals but wolf and collie know how to--Lady slashed murderously at the thin little arm that sought to pull her along.
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And Lad, in the same breath, hurled his great bulk between his mate and his idol. It was a move unbelievably swift for so large a dog. And it served its turn.
The eye-tooth slash that would have cut the little[Pg 58] girl's arm to the bone, sent a red furrow athwart Lad's massive shoulder. Before Lady could snap again, or, indeed, could get over her surprise at her mate's intervention, Lad was shouldering her off the
edge of the veranda steps. Very gently he did this, and with no show of teeth. But he did it with much firmness.
In angry amazement at such rudeness on the part of her usually subservient mate, Lady snarled ferociously, and bit at him.
Just then, the child's mother, roused from her letter-writing by the turmoil, came rushing to her endangered offspring's rescue.
"He growled at Baby," she reported hysterically, as the noise brought the Master out of his study and to the veranda on the run. "He
growled at her, and then he and that other horrid brute got to fighting, and----"
"Pardon me," interposed the Master, calling both dogs to him, "but Man is the only animal to maltreat the female of his kind. No male dog would fight with Lady. Much less would Lad--Hello!" he broke off. "Look at his shoulder, though! That was meant for Baby. Instead of scolding Lad, you may thank him for saving her from an ugly slash. I'll keep Lady chained up, after this."
"But----"
"But, with Lad beside her, Baby is in just about as much danger as she would be with a guard of forty U. S. Regulars," went on the Master. "Take[Pg 59] my word for it. Come along, Lady. It's the kennel for you for the next few weeks, old girl. Lad, when I get back, I'll wash that shoulder for you."
With a sigh, Lad went over to the hammock and lay down, heavily. For the first time since Baby's advent at The Place, he was unhappy--very, very unhappy. He had had to jostle and fend off Lady, whom he worshipped. And he knew it would be many a long day before his sensitively temperamental mate would forgive or forget. Meantime, so far as Lady was concerned, he was in Coventry.
And just because he had saved from injury a Baby who had meant no harm and who could not help herself ! Life, all at once, seemed dismayingly complex to Lad's simple soul.
He whimpered a little, under his breath; and lifted his head toward Baby's dangling hand for a caress that might help make things easier. But Baby had been bitterly chagrined at Lady's reception of her friendly advances. Lady could not be punished for this. But Lad could.
She slapped the lovingly upthrust muzzle with all her feeble force. For once, Lad was not amused by the castigation. He sighed, a second time; and curled up on the floor beside the hammock, in a right miserable heap; his head between his tiny forepaws, his great sorrowful eyes abrim with bewildered grief.
Spring drowsed into early summer. And, with[Pg 60] the passing days, Baby continued to look less and less like an atrophied mummy,
and more like a thin, but normal, child of five. She ate and slept, as she had not done for many a month.
The lower half of her body was still dead. But there was a faint glow of pink in the flat cheeks, and the eyes were alive once more. The hands that pulled at Lad, in impulsive friendliness or in punishment, were stronger, too. Their fur-tugs hurt worse than at first. But the hurt always gave Lad that same twinge of pleasure--a twinge that helped to ease his heart's ache over the defection of Lady.
On a hot morning in early June, when the Mistress and the Master had driven over to the village for the mail, the child's mother wheeled the invalid chair to a tree-roofed nook down by the lake--a spot whose deep shade and lush long grass promised more coolness than did the veranda.
It was just the spot a city-dweller would have chosen for a nap--and just the spot through which no countryman would have cared to venture, at that dry season, without wearing high boots.
Here, not three days earlier, the Master had killed a copperhead snake. Here, every summer, during the late June mowing, The Place's scythe-wielders moved with glum caution. And seldom did their progress go unmarked by the scythe-severed body of at least one snake.
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