away.

For weeks we had a sick collie on our hands. He dreaded food and would
squeeze himself into all impossible places when he saw either one of us
coming with the prescribed "nourishment." As for medicine, he
contracted that autumn an aversion to bottles which he never overcame.
Years afterward, if Sigurd, about to enter a room, stopped short on the
threshold and turned abruptly away, we looked around for the bottle.

One morning the gasps were very feeble. The veterinary told us the end
was at hand. We took our earth-loving collie out from his dark
hospital-nook in the house and laid him down among the asters and
goldenrods on the wild land at the rear. The Lady of Cedar Hill had
come over to see him once more. He was lying so still that we thought
he would not move again, but at the sound of that beloved voice Sigurd
stirred a feeble tail and breathed a ghostly echo of his lyric cry.
Faint and hoarse though it was, there was the old glad recognition in
it, and his first mistress, forgetting her intended precautions for the
dogs at home, knelt down beside her Njal, comforting him with tender
strokes and soft, caressing words. From that hour he began to mend, but
so slowly that we were anxious about him all winter. Cruel pains would
suddenly dart through him and he could never understand where they came
from nor who did it. We would hear the sharp, distinctive cry that
meant one of those pangs and then see Sigurd stagger up from his rug or
cushion, look at it with deep reproach and cross to the furthest corner
of the room. Once such a shoot of pain took him as he was standing by
Joy-of-Life's gentle mother, his head propped on her knee, and the air
of incredulous grief with which he drew back and gazed at her smote her
to the soul. It was a matter of days before he could be coaxed to come
to her again.

One of the discoveries of Sigurd's illness was the heart of our Swedish
maid, Cecilia. Fresh from Ellis Island, buxom, comely, neat as a
scoured rolling-pin, she regarded us with no more feeling than did her
molding-board. We introduced her to the ways of an American household;
we helped her with the speaking of English; we paid her wages; we were,
in short, her Plymouth Rock, on which she stepped to her career in the
New World. Best of all, we were palates and stomachs on which to try
her sugary experiments, for it was her steadfast ambition to become an
artist in dough with the view of securing a lucrative posit