ld, at the word of command, lie down and, resisting
every temptation to leave his post, watch over a handkerchief or glove
or parasol until he was called off by the same voice that had imposed
the duty on him. It was I who ruined this excellent attainment by
setting him, beside a pansy-bed agleam with sympathetic twinkles, to
guard a hoptoad. To Sigurd's dismay and annoyance that brownie of the
garden refused to play the game. How could a puppy remain at his post
if his post would not remain at the puppy? Sigurd tried to paw the toad
back into place, he remonstrated with it in a series of shrill barks
and at last, when he heard us laughing at him, he indignantly
repudiated, and forever, the whole business of guarding. It was then
that Joy-of-Life accused me of being a demoralizing influence and for
Sigurd's good reminded me of what I had quite forgotten and he had
never known,--that he was not "our puppy" but hers.

"I want," said Joy-of-Life, bending her earnest look upon us both,
"that Sigurd should grow up into a good dog, and how can he be a good
dog if you turn duty into a joke?"

I felt so guilty that Sigurd hurried over to lick my hand.

"Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, and Sigurd, with an
impartial flourish of his tail, lay down exactly between us.

This delicate question was ultimately decided by no less an arbiter
than Mother Goose. In pursuance of the theory that her immortal
nonsense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith--this is what is known
as Literary Research--I had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an
indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take home for comparison
with an accumulation of other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed
on creamy pages with wide margins and choicely bound in white and gold.
It was an extraordinary grace of permission and, even in the act of
passing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesitated.

"It must not come to harm," he said, "for it is irreplaceable; but I
know how you value books and I believe there are no children, to whom
this might be a temptation, under your roof."

"Unfortunately, no; only a puppy."

"We will risk the puppy," he smiled,--but he did not know Sigurd.

I carried that book home as carefully as if it had been a nest of
humming-bird's eggs. As I used it that evening at my desk, I propped it
up at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. Then I slipped
it into a vacant space on the shelf of the revolving