Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road. Katharine Lee Bates

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      Being educators ourselves, we did not think much of education as such and gave little attention to teaching him artificial tricks. Joy-of-Life was in favor of vocational training and decided that he must learn to guard. Her efforts nearly achieved success. For one proud fortnight Sigurd would, at the word of command, lie down and, resisting every temptation to leave his post, watch over a handkerchief or glove or parasol until he was called off by the same voice that had imposed the duty on him. It was I who ruined this excellent attainment by setting him, beside a pansy-bed agleam with sympathetic twinkles, to guard a hoptoad. To Sigurd's dismay and annoyance that brownie of the garden refused to play the game. How could a puppy remain at his post if his post would not remain at the puppy? Sigurd tried to paw the toad back into place, he remonstrated with it in a series of shrill barks and at last, when he heard us laughing at him, he indignantly repudiated, and forever, the whole business of guarding. It was then that Joy-of-Life accused me of being a demoralizing influence and for Sigurd's good reminded me of what I had quite forgotten and he had never known—that he was not "our puppy" but hers.

      "I want," said Joy-of-Life, bending her earnest look upon us both, "that Sigurd should grow up into a good dog, and how can he be a good dog if you turn duty into a joke?"

      I felt so guilty that Sigurd hurried over to lick my hand.

      "Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, and Sigurd, with an impartial flourish of his tail, lay down exactly between us.

      This delicate question was ultimately decided by no less an arbiter than Mother Goose. In pursuance of the theory that her immortal nonsense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith—this is what is known as Literary Research—I had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take home for comparison with an accumulation of other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed on creamy pages with wide margins and choicely bound in white and gold. It was an extraordinary grace of permission and, even in the act of passing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesitated.

      "It must not come to harm," he said, "for it is irreplaceable; but I know how you value books and I believe there are no children, to whom this might be a temptation, under your roof."

      "Unfortunately, no; only a puppy."

      "We will risk the puppy," he smiled—but he did not know Sigurd.

      I carried that book home as carefully as if it had been a nest of humming-bird's eggs. As I used it that evening at my desk, I propped it up at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. Then I slipped it into a vacant space on the shelf of the revolving bookcase close at hand and, resolving to return it the next morning, turned to a good-night romp with the Volsung. We tried several new games without winning much popular applause. He was a failure as Wolf at the Door, because he barked so gleefully for admittance to the room where Joy-of-Life was brushing her mother's beautiful white hair and was so welcome when he came bursting in; nor did he shine as Mother Hubbard's dog, for his friend in the kitchen, Cecilia, who never let her cupboard go bare, had just filled the doughnut jar. So we practiced in secret for a few minutes on "a poetic recital" of Hickory Dickory Dock and then came forth to electrify the household. Taking a central seat, I repeated those talismanic syllables, at whose sound Sigurd jumped upon me, climbed up till his forepaws rested on the high top of the chair, in graphic illustration of the way the mouse ran up the clock, emitted an explosive bark when, shifting parts at a sudden pinch, he became for an instant the clock striking one, and then scrambled down with alacrity, a motion picture of the retreating mouse. This was no small intellectual exercise for a collie, and at the end of our one and only public performance he broke away and squeezed himself under the sofa, where he lay rubbing his poor, overwrought noddle against the coolest spot on the wall.

      His mental energies had revived by morning and apparently he wanted to review his Hickory Dickory Dock, for he was in my study earlier than I and there, from all the rows of books on all the open shelves, he must needs pick out Mother Goose, even that unique copy de luxe. When I came in, there was Sigurd outstretched on his favorite rug, beside my desk, with the book between his forepaws, ecstatically engaged in chewing off one corner.

      My gasp of horror brought Joy-of-Life speedily to the scene, and Sigurd, instantly aware that he had committed a transgression beyond precedent, slid unobtrusively away, his penitent tail tucked between his legs. We were too keenly concerned over the injury done to remember to punish him, but no further punishment than our obvious distress was needed. Never again would Sigurd touch a book or anything resembling a book. He had discovered, once for all, that he had no taste for literature.

      "What can you do?" asked Joy-of-Life, distractedly trying to wipe that pulpy corner dry with her napkin. "This rich binding is ruined, but the margins are so broad that Sigurd—O Sigurd!—has not quite chewed through to the print."

      "Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and ashes and pay what I have to pay," I answered gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me to add:

      "Of course, since it's your dog that has done the damage——"

      "Sigurd is our dog," hastily interposed Joy-of-Life. "I give you half of him here and now, and we'll divide the damage."

      So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the kind librarian I was not without a certain selfish consolation, for if I should have to pay over all my bank account, I would be getting my money's worth. The librarian bent his brows over that mangled volume, listened severely to my abject narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off his nose did I realize that he was convulsed with laughter.

      "What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite to resent his mirth.

      He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, examined the book once more.

      "Well!" he replied in a choking voice. "If it were possible to replace this volume, I should have to require you to do so at whatever cost. But there is no other copy to be had. Its æsthetic value is gone beyond repair. The text, fortunately, is intact. We shall have to cut the pages down to the print and bind them into plain covers. A pity, but it can't be helped. The circumstances do not seem to call for a fine, but the rebinding will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents."

      Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, I paid it all.

      Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the outer shining of the gladness that possessed him, he had his share of the ills that flesh is heir to, the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of distemper. With human obtuseness, we did not realize at first that our collie was sick. We heard him making strangling sounds and thought he had swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started out, that Sunday afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, partly for the purpose of exercising Sigurd, and were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of enthusiasm. Instead of multiplying the miles by his usual process of racing in erratic circles around and around us and dashing off on far excursions over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly at heel, like the well-trained dog he never was. He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed, and soon began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay down and, for a time, flatly refused to budge. We laughed at his new game of Lazy Dog and relentlessly whistled him along. We were almost home, having passed through the village square, Sigurd lagging far in the rear, when a notorious bloodhound, out for his weekly constitutional, broke away from the steel chain by which his master was holding him and charged on our big puppy. Sigurd ran for his life, but the fleeter hound was close upon him. There were knots of men loafing about the square and, waiting for the next trolley car, there stood among them an old dame gayly attired in the colors of her native Erin. Sigurd's limited range of experience had led him to regard men either as secondary creatures who did what they were bid by the all-potent Lady of Cedar Hill or as parlor and piazza, ornaments enveloped in an unpleasant odor of tobacco. СКАЧАТЬ