ounds
Tara reached the door of the den, and stood erect, her fore-paws
against the door, more than six feet above the ground.

"There, there, pet; your children are all right, you see," said the
Mistress, as she let Tara into the den.

In a moment, lighter of foot than a terrier, for all that she
weighed as much as an average man, Tara was in the midst of the big
bed, where she saw her puppies bunched snugly and asleep. She
looked up gratefully at the Mistress, as the roused pups (she had
touched them with her nose) came mewing about her feet, and coiled
down at once to nurse them, apparently unconscious of the fact that
there were only four mouths to feed instead of five. One cannot say
for certain whether or not she missed Finn then. She licked the
four assiduously while they nursed; and, in any case, four gaping
little mouths, and four wriggling, helpless little bodies,
represent a considerable claim upon a Wolfhound mother's attention
and strength; also, it may be, that if she did notice that the big
grey whelp was missing, she was too wise and devoted a mother and
nurse to allow herself to injure the remaining four by fretting and
worrying over matters beyond her immediate control. One must
remember, too, that Tara lived in an atmosphere of the most
implicit confidence, in which she never even heard an unkind word.
On the other hand, if there had been no puppies at all on that bed,
when Tara returned from her brief excursion to the back-kitchen,
then it is likely that the big den would not have been strong
enough to have held her for long within its wooden walls. The room
had windows, and match-boarding and weather-board are not like
iron.

Having seen Tara comfortably settled down with her family of four,
the Mistress hurried back to the house in time to see the Master
unwrapping little Finn from a soft old blanket, and placing him
carefully in the midst of three puppies of perhaps half his size,
in a hamper near the kitchen stove. Finn bleated rather languidly
for two minutes in his new environment, and then, being very full
of milk, and very warm, forgot what the trouble was and fell
asleep. The Master closed the lid of the hamper then, and said:--

"I'll let them have a good two hours together there. Finn ought to
assimilate the smell of the others pretty well by then. What do you
think of the foster?"

"Oh, I like her," said the Mistress of the Kennels. "She seems a
nice affectionate little beast, and