Sigurd--O _Sigurd_!--has not quite chewed
through to the print."

"Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and ashes and pay what I have
to pay," I answered gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me to add:

"Of course, since it's _your_ dog that has done the damage----"

"Sigurd is _our_ dog," hastily interposed Joy-of-Life. "I give you half
of him here and now, and we'll divide the damage."

So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the kind librarian I was not
without a certain selfish consolation, for if I should have to pay over
all my bank account, I would be getting my money's worth. The librarian
bent his brows over that mangled volume, listened severely to my abject
narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off his nose did I
realize that he was convulsed with laughter.

"What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite to resent his mirth.

He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, examined the book once more.

"Well!" he replied in a choking voice. "If it were possible to replace
this volume, I should have to require you to do so at whatever cost.
But there is no other copy to be had. Its aesthetic value is gone beyond
repair. The text, fortunately, is intact. We shall have to cut the
pages down to the print and bind them into plain covers. A pity, but it
can't be helped. The circumstances do not seem to call for a fine, but
the rebinding will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents."

Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, I paid it all.

Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the outer shining of the
gladness that possessed him, he had his share of the ills that flesh is
heir to, the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of distemper.
With human obtuseness, we did not realize at first that our collie was
sick. We heard him making strangling sounds and thought he had
swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started out, that Sunday
afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, partly for the purpose of exercising
Sigurd, and were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of enthusiasm.
Instead of multiplying the miles by his usual process of racing in
erratic circles around and around us and dashing off on far excursions
over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly at heel, like the
well-trained dog he never was. He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed,
and soon began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay down and, for
a time, flatly refused to budge. We laughed at his new game of Lazy