mber clearly one typical escapade. It had snowed for three
successive days and nights. Joy-of-Life was away in Washington, reading
a learned paper before some convention of economists. Her mother passed
the shut-in hours patiently by the fireside, meditating with
disapproval on Dante's _Inferno_ which I was reading to her, at
intervals, for cheer during her daughter's absence. Sigurd was spoiling
for a romp. At last, in desperation, he amused himself by eating
everything he came across,--a tube of paste, a roll of tissue paper,
one of his own ribbons. I saw the latter end of the ribbon disappearing
into his mouth and sprang to seize it, meaning to drag the rest out of
his inner recesses, but Sigurd secured it by a furious gulp and capered
away in triumph. At last the flakes had ceased falling, the snow plow
had struggled through and, yielding to the big puppy's desperate
urgency, I took him out to walk, following after the plow between
glittering walls as high as my shoulder. At a turn in the road, I
caught sight, across the level expanse, of the Younger Sister
exercising an invisible Laddie. Suddenly there appeared above the
parapet the tips of two golden-brown ears, pricked up in eager inquiry.
Sigurd, overtopped by our own wall, could not have seen them, but with
one tremendous lurch he was up and out, wallowing madly through the
drifts to meet Laddie, who, like a miniature snow plow, was already
breaking a way toward him. The collies touched noses and, ranging
themselves side by side, plunged off into that blank of white, utterly
deaf to the human calls that would check the onward impulse of their
sacred brotherhood.

They had another glorious run two days later, when the snow was frosted
and could bear their weight. Mad with mischief, they raced miles on
miles,--to Oldtown and beyond, barking at every man they met and
leaping at every horse; they dashed into Waban Way and out over the
spacious Honeymoon estates; they scampered hither and thither across
the three hundred acres of the campus; they careered back and forth
over the frozen lake and challenged the college girls to a
rough-and-tumble in the snow. Meanwhile the Younger Sister and I,
seriously alarmed lest some nervous horse, startled by their antics,
should bring about disaster, had taken a sleigh and gone forth in
pursuit. Disquieting news of them kept coming to us as we drove.

"Two young collies? I should say so. I met them an hour ago, way over
in Do