and an accident. He had been
with us only a few weeks when a college colleague, then brightening our
table with her presence, started to play stick with him before dinner.
Sigurd's way of playing stick was to bring you anything from a
clothespin to a beanpole and coax you to throw it for him, holding it
up lightly between his teeth for you to take. This time he had a piece
of board with jagged ends, and our friend, whose own dog, a monstrously
ugly and therefore supremely choice Boston Bull, would hang on to a
stick with iron jaws while she tried in vain to wrench it from him,
mistook the game. Sigurd held up his stick by one end, deftly balancing
it in the air, and she, supposing that he would maintain his grip,
rammed it suddenly down his throat. But Sigurd, eager for his run, at
once let go, with the result that his throat was rather badly cut. He
was surprised into one scream of pain and then silently tore about in
circles, his tail low and rigid. His would-be playmate, grieved to the
heart, had hurried for his Japanese water-bowl, but Sigurd would touch
nothing that she brought. He went, instead, to a natural basin in the
rock, always his favorite drinking-cup, where he lapped away at a
prodigious rate, leaving a red stain on the water. After this he hid in
the bushes, and it was not until dinner was nearly over that Sigurd
came trotting in, ears and tail still depressed. Joy-of-Life, with the
voice that was healing in itself, called him to her, but he passed us
both by, going straight to the comparative stranger who had innocently
hurt him. Settling on his haunches beside her chair, Sigurd gazed up
mournfully but understandingly into her eyes and offered his
magnanimous paw.

"You know I didn't mean to, and you came in to say so and to forgive
me, you perfect little gentleman," she exclaimed, shaking the proffered
paw as deferentially as if it had been the hand of Socrates. And that
was the end of it. Sigurd coughed up a little blood and a few splinters
that night, but he always met this lady, on her frequent comings, with
a special, quiet courtesy, though he never invited her to a game of
stick again.

Sigurd had one playmate who shamefully imposed upon his noble
disposition. Nellie was an ancient spaniel, whose black curls were
turning a dingy gray. She was our next neighbor and Sigurd's first
love. Nellie was too fat and wheezy to romp, but she would sit,
blinking approval, the center of a circle whose circu