p with her, at times when it would have been far
more comfortable to drowse. He bore, without murmur, her growling
assaults on his food; amusedly standing aside while she annexed his
supper's choicest bits.

He endured, too, her occasional flurries of hot temper; and made no
protest when Lady chose to wreak some grievance against life by flying
at him with bristling ruff and jaws asnarl. Her keen little milk teeth
hurt like the mischief, when they dug into his ears or his paws, in one
of these rage-gusts. But he did not resent the pain or the indignity by
so much as drawing back out of harm's way. And, afterward, when quick
repentance replaced anger and she strove to make friends with him
again, Lad was inordinately happy.

To both the Mistress and the Master, from the very outset, it was plain
that Lady was not in any way such a dog as their beloved Lad. She was
as temperamental as Peter Grimm himself. She had hair-trigger nerves, a
swirlingly uncertain temper that was scarce atoned for by her charm and
lovableness; and she lacked Lad's stanchness and elusive semi-human
quality. The two were as different in nature as it is possible for a
couple of well-brought-up thoroughbred collies to be. And the humans'
hearts did not go out to Lady as to Lad. Still, she was an ideal pet,
in many ways. And, Lad's utter devotion to her was a full set of
credentials, by itself.

Autumn froze into winter. The trees turned into naked black ghosts; or,
rather, into many-stringed harps whereon the northwest gales
alternately shrieked and roared. The fire-blue lake was a sheet of
leaden ice, twenty inches thick. The fields showed sere and grayly
lifeless in the patches between sodden snow-swathes. Nature had flown
south, with the birds; leaving the northern world a lifeless and empty
husk, as deserted as last summer's robin-nests.

Lady, in these drear months of a dead world, changed as rapidly as had
the smiling Place. From a shapeless gray-gold fuzzy baby, she grew lank
and leggy. The indeterminate fuzz was buried under a shimmering
gold-and-white coat of much beauty. The muskrat face lengthened and
grew delicately graceful, with its long muzzle and exquisite profile.

Lady was emerging from clownish puppyhood into the charm of youth. By
the time the first anemones carried God's message of spring through the
forests' lingering snow-pall, she had lost her adolescent gawkiness and
was a slenderly beautiful young collie; small and ligh