ook, when he should have been working.

Now, these men were giants--physically as well as mentally. Being
giants, they were by nature slow of development.

The kitten, at six months of age, is graceful and compact and of
perfect poise. The lion-cub, at the same age, is a gawky and foolish
and ill-knit mass of legs and fur; deficient in sense and in symmetry.
Yet at six years, the lion and the cat are not to be compared for power
or beauty or majesty or brain, or along any other lines.

The foregoing is not an essay on the slow development of the Great. It
is merely a condensation of the Mistress's earnest arguments against
the selling or giving away of a certain hopelessly awkward and
senseless and altogether undesirable collie pup named Bruce.

From the very first, the Mistress had been Bruce's champion at The
Place. There was no competition for that office. She and she alone
could see any promise in the shambling youngster.

Because he had been born on The Place, and because he was the only son
of Rothsay Lass, whom the Mistress had also championed against strong
opposition, it had been decided to keep and raise him. But daily this
decision seemed less and less worth while. Only the Mistress's
championing of the Undesirable prevented his early banishment.

From a fuzzy and adventurous fluff-ball of gray-gold-and-white fur,
Bruce swiftly developed into a lanky giant. He was almost as large
again as is the average collie pup of his age; but, big as he was, his
legs and feet and head were huge, out of all proportion to the rest of
him. The head did not bother him. Being hampered by no weight of brain,
it would be navigated with more or less ease, in spite of its bulk. But
the legs and feet were not only in his own way, but in every one else's.

He seemed totally lacking in sense, as well as in bodily coordination.
He was forever getting into needless trouble. He was a stormcenter. No
one but a born fool--canine or human--could possibly have caused
one-tenth as much bother.

The Mistress had named him "Bruce," after the stately Scottish
chieftain who was her history-hero. And she still called him
Bruce--fifty times a day--in the weary hope of teaching him his name.
But every one else on The Place gave him a title instead of a name--a
title that stuck: "The Pest." He spent twenty-four hours, daily, living
up to it.

Compared with Bruce's helplessly clownish trouble-seeking propensities,
Charlie Chaplin's screen e