k
to his home kennel and to the rowdy throng of brothers and sisters and,
most of all, to the soft furry mother against whose side he had nestled
every night since he was born. But if so, Lad was too valiant to show
homesickness by so much as a whimper. And, assuredly, this House of Peace
was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty
horrible and jouncing and smelly and noisy hours.

"From one to another of the group strayed the level sorrowful gaze. After
the swift inspection Laddie's eyes rest again on the Mistress. For an
instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which
held no hint of personal interest.

"Then, all at once, his plumy tail began to wave. Into his sad eyes sprang
a flicker of warm friendliness. Unbidden--oblivious of everyone else--he
trotted across to where the Mistress sat. He put one tiny white paw in her
lap and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awave, eyes
shining.

"'There's no question whose dog he's going to be,' laughed the Master.
'He's elected you--by acclamation.'"

=iii=

Not content with being the husband of Margaret Sangster, C. M. Sheridan
has written _The Stag Cook Book_. I would have it understood that this is
an honest-to-goodness cook-book, although I readily confess that there is
plenty of humour throughout its pages. Mr. Sheridan has acquired various
unusual and unreplaceable recipes--I believe he secured from Wladislaw
Benda, the illustrator, a rare and secret formula for the preparation of a
species of Hungarian or Polish pastry. Now, as every housewife knows, and
as no man except a Frenchman or somebody like that knows, the preparation
of pastry is an intricate art. Simply to make ordinary French pastry
requires innumerable rollings to incredible thinnesses; besides which the
pastry has to be chilled; but there is more than that to this recondite
substance which Mr. Benda, probably under the terms of the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, surrendered to Mr. Sheridan. The pastry in question has to
be executed with the aid of geometrical designs. Mr. Sheridan has supplied
the necessary front elevation and working plans. He shows you where you
fold along the line from A to B--in other words, along the dotted line.
Thus no man using this unique cook-book can go wrong any more than his
wife can go wrong when making a new dress according to Pictorial Review or
McCall's or Delineator patterns.

On the other hand, wom