d against a soft surface from which
warm milk trickled. "At last!" one can imagine Finn muttering, if
he had been old enough to know how to talk. Immediately his little
hind-legs began to work like pistons, and his fore-paws to knead
and pound at the soft udder from which the milk was drawn. Finn,
with his two foster-brothers, was at the dugs of the foster-mother,
a soft-eyed little sheep-dog, then occupying a very comfortable
corner of the big bed in the coach-house.

The Master sat watchfully beside the sheep-dog. She was very glad
to be eased of some of her superabundance of milk, and curved her
elastic body forward to simplify matters for the pups. Then she
began to lick the back and flank of the pup nearest her head; one
of her own. The Master leaned forward. The foster's sensitive nose
passed over the back of the first pup to the wriggling tail of
Finn; and her big eyes hardened and looked queerly straight down
her muzzle at the fat grey back of the stranger; a back twice as
broad as those of her own pups. The black nostrils quivered and
expanded, expressing suspicious resentment. No warm tongue curled
out over Finn's fat back; but, instead, a nose made curiously harsh
and unsympathetic pushed him clear away from the place he had
selected, after spluttering hurried investigation, and out upon the
straw of the bed.

Immediately then, and almost before Finn's sticky mouth could open
in a bleat of protest, the Master's hand had returned him to the
warm dugs. Again came the harsh, suspicious nose of the foster
about Finn's tail, and this time a low growl followed the resentful
sniff, and blind, helpless, unformed little jelly that Finn was,
instinct made him wriggle fearfully from under that cold nose. The
language in which bitches speak to the very young among puppies is
simplicity itself. The Master, human though he was, had not failed
to catch the sense of this observation of the foster's, which was:--

"Get out of here, you lumping great whelp! You're not mine, and I
won't nurse you. Get out, or I'll bite. It's true you've somehow
got the smell of mine; but--you can't deceive me. Gr-r-r-! Get
out!"

But, though Finn instinctively wriggled his hind-quarters from
under that cold muzzle, his mouth and fore-feet vigorously pursued
their business; and, before the threatened bite came, the Master's
hand (a firm one, and soothing to dog people) had caressingly
pressed the foster's head back upon the straw, and held