and within the minute was busily engaged in giving Finn
his morning tubbing and polishing, after which she disposed herself
with great consideration in a position which made nursing an easy
delight for Finn, and enabled his assiduous foster-mother to watch
the undulations of his fat back, out of the tail of her left eye,
while apparently sleeping.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV

FIRST STEPS

The sturdy, kindly, plebeian sheep-dog proved an admirable foster-mother,
diligent, thorough, and forgetful of nothing, not even of
her own needs and well-being, though it was evident that these were
served from quite unselfish motives, and obliged to take a
secondary place in all her thoughts. It was particularly well for
Finn that the sheep-dog proved so sterling a soul; for, though he
naturally knew and cared nothing about it all, Finn received less
attention during the next few days from the Master and the Mistress
than they were wont to give their canine families. Of course, the
foster was properly fed and given exercise and otherwise looked
after; but the Master did not smoke his pipe in the coach-house,
and the Mistress of the Kennels did not sit on the side of the bed
for half an hour at a time and stroke the foster's ears while
admiring her nursling, as certainly would have happened in normal
circumstances.

The Master's doubts about poor Tara's health had been fully
justified. Her puppies were thin and inclined to be ailing, and she
herself was only just saved, by means of scrupulous care and
attention, and the use of other drugs besides externally-applied
belladonna, from a severe illness. Meantime, another foster was
telegraphed for, and, an hour after this new-comer's arrival, one
of Tara's pups died. The Master had no time to be greatly concerned
about this, by reason of his anxiety regarding Tara herself. He
felt that another bout of the illness in which she had nearly lost
her life in the early days would almost certainly be fatal, and the
steps he took to stave this off kept him very busy. In addition to
this, a carpenter had to be set to work in a great hurry to put
together a suitable bed for the new foster-mother in a shed in the
orchard. Fortunately, the weather was very favourable, and the two
puppies taken from Tara soon picked up their lost ground when they
were established with their foster, an active, cross-bred
spaniel-retriever.

But Finn in the coach-house knew nothing of all this. Apart