Kitabı oku: «Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road», sayfa 6

But although this is the only outpouring of Ellen's confidence to Sigurd at which I played eavesdropper, too often her mad screeches would bring us pell-mell into the kitchen where we would find the two of them wrought to a state of highest excitement. Once Sigurd, lying at full length, was squeezing a hollow rubber ball between his lips, making it emit harrowing squeaks that Ellen, hopping grotesquely up and down, identified as the cries of an imprisoned banshee. Another time she had one arm clasped about Sigurd's neck and with the other hand was pounding her little alarm clock on the floor, entreating him, "Bite the feaver whin it jumps out, Darlint. A year ago by this clock it was that Poor Ellen had the feaver and died and she has been in the Fire ever since."

Again we heard sounds of scuffling and struggle, punctuated by desperate screams from Ellen and furious barks from Sigurd. The kitchen was in a whirlwind, but Ellen was presently calmed enough to explain to us in terrified gasps that the demons were trying to drag her away from the throne of God and that she had set Sigurd on her tormentors. Our gallant collie evidently drove off the fiends, for Ellen's passion of resistance suddenly ceased and, sinking to the floor, she hid her convulsed face in Sigurd's ruff, wailing, "But next time they'll get me. Poor Ellen! Poor Ellen! It's a sore and sorry life she's had, and to come to the Pain in the end!"

On the last night of Ellen's stay with us, – for we had arranged, without telling her, to have the crazy old creature transferred to the office of a friendly physician, where her prowess with the scrubbing-brush would be appreciated and her mental peculiarities be under wise and humane observation – an ear-splitting yell once more summoned us post-haste to the kitchen. Sigurd, erect on rigid legs, was staring with an uncanny fixity of gaze on vacancy, while Ellen, on her knees, wringing her hands above her head, was alternately abjuring him and Heaven.

"O Darlint, is it my death ye're after seeing now? Is it Poor Ellen with the candles at head and feet? Och, let me go! I lave this house to-night. It's not Poor Ellen will bide with a dog does be looking at her own ghost."

"Nonsense, Ellen!" protested Joy-of-Life, interposing her strong, wholesome presence between the distracted old woman and the outside door. "There are no ghosts here. Sigurd is only looking at the wall. Perhaps he heard a rat or a mouse in there."

"Ouch!" shrilled Ellen, dodging out of the door in a fresh paroxysm of fright. "Rats and mice is it! Rats and mice do be the black spirits come to gnaw out our brains. And here they've come for Poor Ellen's wits. They chase Poor Ellen wherever she goes. But she'll give thim the slip on the morrow."

While Joy-of-Life brought Ellen in, quieted her with malted milk and sent her to bed, I puzzled over Sigurd, whose staring eyes and bristling hair still gave evidence of something we could not discern. Other observers of dog conduct have testified to occurrences of this kind, as, very recently, the master of a red cocker spaniel (Walter E. Carr in The Story of Five Dogs) and from far antiquity the Arabs, who hold that a dog can see the wings of the Angel of Death hovering over the one for whom Azrael has been sent.

Ellen came down in the morning, still determined on departure and entirely content with the place we had secured for her. All that day through she was her most cleanly, thrifty and cheerful self. Nothing would do but she must sweep the whole house from attic to cellar, especially scouring her own room until it was pure enough for Diana. Pleased with the bustle of packing and getting off, evidently an habitual state of things with Poor Ellen, she graced her farewell with a flourish of economical courtesies. She presented Joy-of-Life with a banana which she had blarneyed from our Italian fruit-vender, and gave me a little jar of cream, begged or bullied from the milkman in the early dawn. As for Sigurd, she made him a square foot of his favorite corn bread and hung a Catholic medal to his collar. She went off in the best of humor, greatly set up by her own cleverness in having been able to make, so cheaply, such suitable good-by gifts. When the expressman came for her shabby, bulging bag, she treated him to such a nice little luncheon of cookies and lemonade that he offered her a ride to the station. From the driver's lofty seat she waved us a queenly adieu, calling back: "The Lord loves Poor Ellen, after all." Sigurd ran with the wagon as far as the corner. The last we saw of his psychic instructor, she was kissing her workworn hands to him and shrilling back endearments.

THE PLEADERS

 
Before the Majesty of Most High God
The gentlest of the glad Archangels came;
Swift down the emerald avenue he trod,
His eager sandals quivering to flame.
Close at his heels there frisked a dog, his mate
In bygone journeyings with young Tobias,
A dog "without," whose love had dared the gate,
Scenting the steps of Brother Azarias,
So-called in those blithe morns when, laughing-eyed,
By thorn and myrrh, the dew on every stem,
He led the son of Tobit to his bride,
And the lad's dog went leaping after them.
 
 
The little winds that in those sunrise-flushed,
Fleet plumes had nestled, to the harpstrings flew
To learn gold melodies for May, but hushed
Was all that glory till a Voice pealed through:
"Mine Angel Raphael, of the Holy Seven
Who lift the prayers of saints before the Throne,
What wild, unworded anguish troubles Heaven,
To man's appeal the wailing undertone?
Men's orisons for Peace, for Peace, for Peace,
Smothered the psalms of Paradise, until
I bade that vain and bitter crying cease.
My will is Peace. Let mortals do my will."
 
 
Before the shining of the Mercy Seat
The Angel raised a censer. "Lord, I bring
The screams of shell-torn horses, thrashing feet
Of mangled mules, the pigeon's broken wing,
Gasping of dogs gas-tortured, wounds and woe
Of myriad creatures by Thy breath endowed
With being. Theirs the prayers that overflow
This vessel by whose weight my heart is bowed."
Ah, strange to see that poor, vague incense rise,
Dim supplication crossed by fragrances
Of courage, faithfulness, self-sacrifice
Even of these brute martyrs, even of these.
 
 
"Brother of Sorrows, bear to man those groans
Of a creation that I fashioned well
And gave to his dominion, – man, who owns
One morning star to make it heaven or hell.
I am but God, a Pity throned above
To watch the sparrow's fall, to feel its throes
And wait the slow, sweet blossoming of love,
Small, kindly loves from which the Great Love grows."
Then Raphael, Healer of the Earth, bowed thrice,
Withdrawing through the ranks of seraphim
Who smiled to see how, scorning Paradise,
On frolic feet the dog sped after him.
 

COLLEGE CAREER

"Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast."

– Jonson's Epigrams, XVIII.

Whatever may be thought of Sigurd's college career, there can be no doubt that he careered through college. He was at the top of bliss in a mad run over the campus. With streaming ruff and tail he would rush on like Lelaps, the wild hound of Cephalus on the trail of the monstrous fox sent by a slighted goddess to harass the Thebans and, like Lelaps when the Olympians chose to make the chase eternal by turning both dog and fox to stone, Sigurd would come to a sudden stop on the brow of a hill, standing out against the sky like a collie statue poised for running.

Joy-of-Life could cross the broad meadow almost as lightly and swiftly as he and their morning pilgrimages to chapel were expeditions of high glory. There were hundreds of girls abroad at that hour and often Sigurd would wheel from the path and dash jubilantly toward any figure that took his fancy, confident of welcome. But if the individual chanced to be a new freshman, not yet acquainted with the college dignitaries, she might meet his advances with fear or annoyance or a still more cutting indifference. Then Sigurd would droop those expectant ears of his and return with dignity to his forsaken comrade. If his greeting were properly reciprocated, he would ramp joyously upon his fellow student and prance about her, leaping to the height of her shoulders in his ecstasy of good-will.

His favorite laboratory was Lake Waban. In the summer afternoons he would tease to have us both escort him up for his swim and if on the way we tried to part company, one or the other turning aside for a more pressing errand, Sigurd would herd us with ancestral art, jumping upon the deserter and gently pushing her back, or standing in the path to block her progress, protesting all the while with coaxing whines, with expostulary barks and with all manner of collie eloquence. If we walked, on the other hand, close together, absorbed in talk, he would jealously push in between us, as he often did when we were having a fireside tête-à-tête or bidding each other good night. He wished us to understand that Sigurd was the one to be loved and that all affections not directed toward Sigurd were superfluous. But when we both accepted his invitation to the lake, the three hundred acres of the college park hardly sufficed for his antics. Curveting about us till he seemed to be ten collies at once, flashing in ever widening circles over the level and over the slopes, bounding upon us with a storm of gleeful sneezes, he would lead the way to Sigurd's Tub, as he considered it. If some one fell in with us and joined us on the walk, Sigurd, always of courteous instinct, would drop back and follow demurely, or amuse himself at a decorous distance by investigating holes, chasing squirrels and striving with wild springs, scrambles, clawings, to climb the trees from whose boughs they mocked his clumsy efforts. But how rejoiced he would be when the interloper turned off! "There! Gone at last! Now we will have fun, all by ourselves!" Then he would cast about for some doughty deed to do, longing to dazzle us by a prodigious feat of strength and skill. If he could find a young tree that our too efficient forestry had cut down he would drag it along, bite and break away its branches, seize it by the middle and balance it in his mouth as a long pole, constantly lifting his bright eyes to us for admiration.

Once arrived at the lake, it was our duty to find sticks and fling them out over the water to the extent of our strength, while Sigurd swam for them, the farther the better. As he would gallantly splash up from the shallows and, stick in mouth, climb the bushy bank, we had to run from the mighty shaking with which, delivering the prize, he loved to give us a shower-bath. After a few such plunges, Sigurd, while we rested on the bank, would appropriate the green apron of Mother Earth for a towel, rolling over and over on the turf to dry himself and completing the process by scampers in the sun. He disliked being wet, for although these swims in the lake ranked among his prime delights, at home he always resented and resisted a bath and, on a showery day, would often run in to the towel rack, pleading to be wiped dry, and would then forthwith run out into the rain again. In our hottest weather he would slip off alone in the early morning to that still lake all sweet with water-lilies and would be gone for hours. A few times, in his younger years, our anxiety took us by mid-day to the shore, whence we would see a yellow head well out in the water. At our whistle, Sigurd would turn and swim back to us with an air of surprise and pleasure as if he had quite forgotten that such dear friends were to be found on land. The outcome was not so happy when, tormented in his fur coat by the heat, he had stolen off to one of his secret mire-pits and indulged in a cool wallow. When he came home plastered and perfumed from head to tail, we would greet him with exclamations of disgust, which brought the Byronic melancholy into his eyes, hustle him off to the rocks behind the house, fling pailfuls of warm water over him and do our best to scrape off his pollutions. On one of these occasions, a college-girl lover and Wallace raced him up to Waban and scrubbed and rinsed him until, so they said, the entire lake had changed color.

In the autumn term Sigurd would take a special course in harvesting, frisking through a neighboring orchard and playing ball with the falling apples. The winter term he gave mainly to athletics and dramatics. How bewildered he was that first snowy morning when he ran out into a strange white ravine bounded by slippery walls and when, desperately lunging over one of these, he felt himself floundering in a drift! His first dubious venture on a crackling sheet of ice taxed his puppy courage, too, but he persisted in his quivering progress across our little Longfellow Pond and swaggered up the further side with his jauntiest sporting air. In later years he enjoyed nothing better than going skating with Lady Blanche, another member of our changeful household, and on a stinging January morning he would outdo the frolics, that Cowper smiled to watch, of the dog who

 
"with many a frisk
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy."
 

As for dramatics, Sigurd loved to thrust his stick deep into a pile of russet leaves or sparkling snow, and then pretend that he was a sanguinary monster whose prey had escaped him, and dig and nose and scrape and scatter and tear and shuffle with frenzied energy, rumbling all the while growls of awful menace, until he had tossed it up to seize and worry, display to the audience always requisite for these performances, and then bury it again for a repetition of the melodrama.

When the winter storms kept him in, his surging vitality made him as restless as an imprisoned wind. If the Cave of Æolus boasted a housekeeper, she had our sympathy. All day long Sigurd would scoot and spin about the little range of rooms that we liked to have quiet and orderly, a very electric battery of mischief. He would pick quarrels with the rugs, scatter the pile of newspapers and dance a scandalous jig with that elderly, respectable Bostonian, The Transcript. He would bump into a gracefully leaning broom and a meditative mop, knocking their wooden wits together and bringing them to the floor with what he considered a beautiful bang. He would stir up civil war on the hearth till poker and tongs and dust-brush and bellows all set upon one another with hideous clang of combat. At last we would toss over to him, in desperation, an old pair of rubbers, and he would make love to one and try to swallow the other, playing as many parts as Bottom longed for, all the way from Pyramus to Lion.

A new stage was provided for him when the storm was over and we undertook to shovel the drift off the piazza. He would instantly claim the star rôle of rival shovel, pawing the powdery heaps with delirious zest, or he would be the snow itself, ecstatically indignant at being swept down the steps. He played thrilling tragi-comedies with bones, too, especially with one monstrous knuckle that might have belonged to the skeleton of Polyphemus, the prize of one of Sigurd's evening prowls. It was a bitter cold midnight, but our happy rebel, sporting with that giant joint, tossing it about in the snow, losing it on purpose, catching its glimmer by grace of the moon and madly pouncing on it once more, would not obey the bed-time whistle. He stretched himself out, a saffron blotch on the white, and hugged his treasure, crunching away persuasively to convince us that the clock was wrong and it was still only dinner time. Our ignominious resort, in such a case, was to fetch from a certain pantry box, the daily object of Sigurd's supplicating sniffs, a piece of cake, and proceed to eat it, with vulgar smack of ostentatious relish, in the doorway, under the electric light. As ever, this stratagem brought our mutineer to terms. Giving the bone a last affectionate lick, he came bounding into the hall in time for the crumbs. But his high spirits were far from spent. Though he consented to play Yellow Caterpillar, curling up in the blanketed round clothes-basket which, for the winter, displaced his Thunder-and-Lightning rug, he barked so often through the small hours, in his dreams or out, that our slumbers were literally curtailed. Rebuked into silence, he gnawed his leash in two, tipped over his basket and settled himself for a morning snooze on the forbidden lounge.

It is obvious that Sigurd was not a model of virtue. We did not want him so much better than ourselves. "That dog would be improved by a good licking," said Joy-of-Life's visiting elder brother. But with all respect for elder brothers – my own had nearly hanged Sigurd by an ingenious contrivance of ropes and loops designed to enable me to unleash him on a summer morning from my sleeping balcony – we decided that we would rather have our collie with all his frolic imperfections on his head than cowed into slavish obedience. Only once when, hardly out of puppyhood, he dashed from my side, as we were walking decorously on the sidewalk, and danced backward on his hind legs in front of a dodging automobile, out-barking its distracted horn, did I attempt to whip him. He had barely escaped with life and limb and, determined to impress him, for his own safety, with his wrong-doing, I caught him by the collar, doubled the leash which I still carried but had almost ceased to use, and began to beat him with it about the head. Sigurd's astonished yelp was answered in an instant from the side street where dwelt the Sisters and, like a white knight of chivalry, Laddie came charging out, thrusting himself between us, leaping upon me and demanding, with a wrath seldom seen in his gentle eyes, that I stop maltreating his twin.

Of course the brothers took the chance to run away together. It was slushy going and when Sigurd came home at seven o'clock, so tired that he could hardly drag one muddy foot after another, he was in shocking trim, his white hose and shirt-front soaked to a disreputable gray. It was unlucky, for his amateur dramatics were to be crowned that evening by a public part on the college stage. He was to be Faithful Dog, watching beside his master, – a forgotten hero of the Revolution, – as that gallant young lieutenant slept away the hour before daybreak, when he was to be executed as a spy. At a low whistle of the rescuer beneath the window, Faithful Dog was to arouse his master by placing a wary paw upon the sleeper's breast and, when the lieutenant had made good his escape, remain behind to face the angry guard and be shot extremely dead in his master's place. Sigurd had thrown himself into this noble rôle with enthusiasm and rehearsed it several times with distinguished success.

An escort of sophomores had been waiting for him in an agony of impatience and, when he at last arrived, there could be no thought of dinner or a nap. Sigurd was hustled down to the laundry, put through merciless ablutions and rushed off to the college barn, our impromptu theater, in the snug little vehicle that our liveryman called his "coop." Three or four girls were sardined in with him, flourishing towels and doing their best to scrub him dry on the way. But it was a ruffled, soapsudsy and excessively drowsy Faithful Dog that trotted out upon the stage, yawned in the face of the rapturous greeting of his congregated friends, the Barn Swallows, jumped up on the prison cot, never meant for him, and rolled himself into a solid slumber-ball, refusing to wake, not even so much as blink, from first to last of the drama. With natural presence of mind, an essential quality in spies, the hero soliloquized to the audience that his Faithful Dog had been drugged, evoking a round of applause at which Sigurd dreamily flapped his tail.

One rôle that he never could be induced to play was that of Dandy. One Sunday afternoon, when he came limping in with his feet all cut and sore from a morning frisk over rough ice, I dressed them in discarded white kid gloves, tying each firmly round the ankle, and started out with Sigurd for a call on the Dryad. But our sturdy Viking resented such dudish apparel and would flump down, at brief intervals, on the crusted drifts and tug away at that detested frippery with the result that, on his arrival, only the paw he thrust out at his amused hostess was still elegant in a tatter of white kid.

Sigurd believed in elective courses rather than required. There were certain things that, as a matter of principle, he persistently refused to learn. Though by nature a dig, as my sister's flower-beds too often testified, not her most fervent remonstrances could convince him that bulbs and bones should not be planted together. His general attitude toward education was not unique. He had "come to college for the life." From the narrow paths of learning he bounded off in pursuit of a "well-rounded development." His social engagements were numerous and pressing. Often he had not time, between afternoon tea in one dormitory and a birthday spread in another, to scamper home for the plain parenthesis of a dog-biscuit dinner. Sometimes we would hear our truant, in the small hours, drop down upon the porch with a thud of utter exhaustion, and would learn by degrees, during the next day or two, that he had gone with a botany or geology class on a long morning tramp, played hare and hounds with one of the athletic teams all the afternoon and paraded the town till midnight with a serenading party. Often in the spring weather we would not set eyes on him for two days running, or might, perhaps, catch a passing glimpse of our collie standing expectant on the stone wall by the East Lodge, watching the stream of girls and waiting for his next invitation. He would dutifully greet us with a bark and a caper and, if we were driving, jump down to follow the carriage, but if one of his student chums came tripping along and threw her arms about him, showering kisses on his sunny head, Sigurd would flourish his tail in rapturous response and off the two would race to "Math." or "Lit." or "Chem." or "Comp." or whatever other branch of knowledge Young America cannot spare breath to pronounce.

We would often see him lying impartially across the knees of a group of girls studying together in some green nook, his plume waving in the faces clustered over Horace or Livy. He had nothing but admiration for such guileless renderings as "The swift hunter pursuing the leper" or "He landed his boats in the sea," and the harder these latter-day Humanists hugged him, the more he sneezed and yawned in a very embarrassment of joy, though when, absorbed in subjunctives, they pinched his silky ears a trifle too hard, he would quietly withdraw and hunt up a stick for them to throw for Sigurd. Not all his mates were wise in their good-will. They would pick up and toss, for him to chase and worry, rough-broken, splintery pieces of painted board or anything that came handy, and presently a lugubrious dog would appear before his family, laying at our feet, perhaps, a well-licked strip of picket fence, and lifting for our ministrations a bleeding mouth, where the red was mingled with a stain of sickly green.

Sigurd took all manner of liberties even with seniors. At home, though he would gaze into the refrigerator with deep interest, he never ventured to insert so much as his nose, and though a dish of candies might be standing on a low table easily in reach, he merely looked and waggled. Only once, on a Tophet-hot afternoon, while a guest, absorbed in talk, sat oblivious of the plate of ice-cream melting on her knee, did Sigurd slip in his craving tongue and accelerate the process. But with the college girls he knew no such restraints. He was familiar with all their chafing-dish corners and, entering by any door he found ajar, he would help himself to a lunch of fudge and wafers before looking about to choose the softest heap of couch cushions for his nap. When a cut foot made walking painful, he would prevail upon the girls to carry him, great fellow that he was, and we would sometimes come upon him dangling across a slender hand-chair, while his panting bearers struggled up the hill to College Hall. On seeing us, he would scramble down and sheepishly make off with an exaggerated limp. Once we chanced on a group of freshmen holding a picnic party with King Sigurd enthroned on a mossy log in the center, his gilt-paper crown tipped rakishly over one eye. He delighted in picnics, cross-country walks, the May-day frolic on the campus, and constantly imperiled his life by frisking about on tennis court, golf links and archery fields. The girls would use him as a postman, sending him from one to another with notes, not always delivered, swinging from his collar, and he often appeared at the door of a college fair or other festivity wearing the ticket which some lavish chum had bought for him. He was about the college grounds and buildings so much that we feared he might become a nuisance, as well as depart from the few principles of collie conduct we had labored to instill. Much to his indignation, therefore, we made him address to the students, through the columns of our little college weekly,

A DOGGEREL PETITION

 
Sigurd begs to say to his friends
That for certain inscrutable ends,
Quite apart from his own sweet way,
There are laws he ought to obey;
And because the sight of a girl
Puts the tip of his tail in a curl,
And sends, with a pit-a-pat start,
The commandments out of his heart,
He has to entreat you should
All help poor Sigurd be good.
'Tisn't easy to choke one's barks,
With squirrels making remarks;
'Tisn't easy to travel home
With girls enticing to roam.
All nice things seem to be naughty;
So it's not that Sigurd's grown haughty,
When he meets you at eve on the meadow,
A yellow scud in the shadow,
And passes your grocery bag
With only a wistful wag.
The New Year's good resolutions,
If broken, bring retributions;
So Sigurd beseeches – 'tis hard —
That you shouldn't call him off guard;
Nor tempt that inquisitive rover,
That affectionate follower, over
The threshold of College Hall;
Nor let him trustfully sprawl
In the pathway of many feet.
And don't, though the sin is sweet,
Don't, for the gleam of his eyes,
His expectant ears' uprise,
For his nose's coaxing nudge,
Feed Sigurd infinite fudge.
 

That helped him through with one generation of college girls, but after three or four years a fresh appeal had to be made, especially in view of the fact that Sigurd had suddenly resumed the dangerous trick, first taken up on his wild scampers with Laddie, of jumping at horses' heads, and we found some of his younger classmates, for Sigurd belonged to every class in turn, encouraging him in it, because he was "so pretty" in his leaps. Hence once more he reluctantly lapsed into verse and recommended to his intimates

A NOSTRUM FOR SIGURD

 
It is wrong to spring
At a horse's nose;
At that quivery thing
It is wrong to spring.
With tail for a wing
I may chase the crows,
But 'tis wrong to spring
At a horse's nose.
 
 
Call me back from the horses
With no, no, noes;
When I try snap courses
Call me back from the horses.
Though my remorse is
A transient pose,
Call me back from the horses
With no, no, noes.
 
 
I'm only a collie,
As Wellesley knows;
Though ever so jolly
I'm only a collie.
Save Sigurd from folly,
For folly has foes,
And I'm only a collie,
As Wellesley knows.
 

There was a perilous season, after a village Airedale had unadvisedly nipped a teasing small boy, when our hysterical local legislation ordered all dogs into muzzles, commanding the police to shoot at sight any canine wayfarer not so equipped. Sigurd, of course, detested his muzzle and though he would sulkily fetch it when he saw us making ready for a walk, he would growl at it and worry it until we had it snapped on, when he would often turn mournfully back from the door or lie down before it literally in flat rebellion, rather than take the air under such humiliating and uncomfortable conditions. He soon began to exercise his ingenuity, however, in the getting rid of that encumbrance, and again and again, having gone forth a model of compliance with the law, he would come bounding back, muzzleless, triumphant, expecting congratulations. It was hard to find a make of muzzle that he could not push off with his paws or scrape off under a fence or rub off between close-growing trees, and impossible to find one that he could not coax his compassionate girl-chums to take off for him. Melted by his pleading whines, they would slip the muzzle down from his jaws so that he wore it as a pendant over his white vest, a compromise that perplexed our honest college policeman, who, Sigurd's neighbor and friend, solved the problem by consistently turning his back and refusing to see the dog at all. But one well-nigh fatal day a special officer, called in by our stern selectmen for the purpose of hunting down all lawless dogs, beheld Sigurd disporting himself in the public road, his muzzle, as so often, gayly flapping under his chin. According to the man's bewildered account, no sooner had he drawn his revolver and taken good aim at the offender, than "a mob of girls, coming from nowhere and everywhere," suddenly enveloped his intended victim and swept the dog off in their midst to the campus. But the officer had a determined jaw of his own. He kept watch for that fawn collie and the next time he caught sight of Sigurd, again with a swinging muzzle, he ran a rope through our poor boy's collar and was dragging him off to the town lockup and execution ground when again an excited throng of nymphs blocked the way.

"How can you be so cruel?" blazed one of Sigurd's fondest playmates, as a dozen arms were thrown about the collie.

"I'm no rougher with that there dog than he is with me," protested the young officer, purple not only through embarrassment but from the tug of war in which he and Sigurd had been matching strength. "He may be your college pet, but his manners ain't no-way ladylike."

Meanwhile one of the girlish hands caressing Sigurd's neck must have succeeded in slipping a buckle, for suddenly his head shot back through the collar, left as a keepsake to the dog-catcher, and our innocent was far on his way toward the safe shelter of home.