Lad: A Dog by Albert Payson Terhune Read Free Book Online Page B

darling,” she broke off, sternly. “You shall not kiss him!” I draw the line at that. Here! Let Mamma rub your lips with her handkerchief.”
    â€œDogs aren’t made to be kissed,” said the Master, sharing, however, Lad’s disgust at the lip-scrubbing process. “But she’ll come to less harm from kissing the head of a clean dog than from kissing the mouths of most humans. I’m glad she likes Lad. And I’m still gladder that he likes her. It’s almost the first time he ever went to an outsider of his own accord.”
    That was how Lad’s idolatry began. And that, too, was how a miserably sick child found a new interest in life.
    Every day, from morning to dusk, Lad was with the Baby. Forsaking his immemorial “cave” under the music-room piano, he lay all night outside the door of her bedroom. In preference even to a romp through the forest with Lady, he would pace majestically alongside the invalid’s wheel chair as it was trundled along the walks or up and down the veranda.
    Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the Master’s seat, at meals—a place that had been his alone since puppyhood—he lay always behind the Baby’s table couch. This to the vast discomfort of the maid who had to step over him in circumnavigating the board, and to the open annoyance of the child’s mother.
    Baby, as the days went on, lost none of her first pleasure in her shaggy playmate. To her, the dog was a ceaseless novelty. She loved to twist and braid the great white ruff on his chest, to toy with his sensitive ears, to make him “speak” or shake hands or lie down or stand up at her bidding. She loved to play a myriad of intricate games with him—games ranging from “Beauty and the Beast,” to “Fairy Princess and Dragon.”
    Whether as Beast (to her Beauty) or in the more complex and exacting role of Dragon, Lad entered whole-souledly into every such game. Of course, he always played his part wrong. Equally, of course, Baby always lost her temper at his stupidity, and pummeled him, by way of chastisement, with her nerveless fists—a punishment Lad accepted with a grin of idiotic bliss.
    Whether because of the keenly bracing mountain air or because of her outdoor days with a chum who awoke her dormant interest in life, Baby was growing stronger and less like a sallow ghostling. And, in the relief of noting this steady improvement, her mother continued to tolerate Lad’s chumship with the child, although she had never lost her own first unreasoning fear of the big dog.
    Two or three things happened to revive this foolish dread. One of them occurred about a week after the invalid’s arrival at The Place.
    Lady, being no fonder of guests than was Lad, had given the veranda and the house itself a wide berth. But one day, as Baby lay in the hammock (trying in a wordy irritation to teach Lad the alphabet), and as the guest sat with her back to them, writing letters, Lady trotted around the corner of the porch.
    At sight of the hammock’s queer occupant, she paused, and stood blinking inquisitively. Baby spied the graceful gold-and-white creature. Pushing Lad to one side, she called, imperiously:
    â€œCome here, new Doggie. You pretty, pretty Doggie!”
    Lady, her vanity thus appealed to, strolled mincingly forward. Just within arm’s reach, she halted again. Baby thrust out one hand, and seized her by the ruff to draw her into petting distance.
    The sudden tug on Lady’s fur was as nothing to the haulings and maulings in which Lad so meekly reveled. But Lad and Lady were by no means alike, as I think I have said. Boundless patience and a chivalrous love for the weak were not numbered among Lady’s erratic virtues. She liked liberties as little as did Lad; and she had a far more drastic way of resenting them.
    At the first pinch of her sensitive skin there was an instant flash of gleaming teeth,