"_Puntarvolo._ Is he religious?
_Gentleman._ I know not what you call religious, but he goes
to church, I am sure."
--Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_.
The zest, the fun, the excitement Sigurd infused into our human humdrum
outwent all expectation. I think it added a relish even to
Joy-of-Life's devotions at the early service of St. Andrew's that a
suppressed yelp and a vehement scamper might at any second denote
Laddie's appearance and Sigurd's instant reversion from her pious
attendant in the vestibule to a wild creature of enraptured speed. He
opened our eyes to a new vision of the most familiar things. What we
had considered merely gray squirrels were revealed, through his
glorious campaign against them, as goblin banditti bent on insult and
robbery. For on those enchanted autumn days, when we would be wandering
through the rich-colored, spicy woods, where winds laughed among the
branches and chased leaves bright as jewels down the air, these
impertinent squirrels were always scolding overhead and dropping acorns
on us. I remember one such stroll, when a falling chestnut smacked
Sigurd soundly on the nose. He at once attributed the indignity to the
squirrels--quite unjustly this time--and made off in pursuit of a wily
old fellow that whisked in and out among the slender birch boles and
led him, as if for the mere sport of it, on a far chase. I was absorbed
meanwhile in altruistic combat with a troop of ants, a foraging party
returning to their hill-castle with a company of belated beetles as
booty. As often as I brushed the ranks into confusion with a spray of
goldenrod, it was astonishing to see how quickly the discomfited ants
would rally and how immediately every one of the madly skurrying
beetles--for their pitiless captors had deprived them of their
wings--would be again a prisoner, surrounded in close formation by a
marching escort. Looking up from this insect tragedy, I saw Sigurd
tearing back with something in his mouth that, for one horrified
instant, I thought was the slaughtered squirrel. It turned out to be my
hat, which, blowing merrily away from the bramble whereon it was hung,
had been captured by my friend in need, who proudly restored it,
somewhat the worse for the manner of its rescue. Later on, in the
hushed Indian summer noons, Joy-of-Life and I would take our luncheon
out into the woods, where our golden collie would roll over and over in
a rustling bed of leaves much of his own color or of brown, fragrant
pine-needles, his bright eyes always on the watch for any aggression
from the peering citizens of the trees.
The winter, however, was Sigurd's heroic season. He had the soul of a
helper, not of a pet, and longed for occupation, responsibility,
service. His sentry duty at night, his guardianship in our walks, his
herding of the family into the dining-room three times a day with
punctual solicitude, these were not enough. It was amusing and yet, in
a way, touching to see with what strenuous earnestness he took upon
himself the task of driving the squirrels away from the bird boxes. For
our neighbors, the "shadowtails," as the Greeks called them, were so
obtuse as to appropriate to their own comfort and convenience every
provision we made for the flying folk. We had put up in the trees near
the house a few bird palaces, variously named, according to the
dominant interest of those whose respective windows overlooked them,
Toynbee Hall, the Tabard Inn, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Mermaid Tavern;
but their bluebird tenants were soon ejected, and families of baby
squirrels, for whose repose their parents busily chewed up mattresses
of leaf and bark, were reared in those proud abodes. To this Sigurd had
to submit, though he would lie for hours on the piazza, his chin on his
paws, wondering why the Collie Creator, whom he probably took to be
much like his adorable father Ralph, only a thousand times as big--for
had not Sigurd heard in the skies the thunder of his bark?--denied to
dogs the gift of climbing trees. But their attack on the food-boxes
brought these pirates almost within Sigurd's reach.
From several of the upper windows had been built out simple and
practical feeding-shelves,--shallow wooden boxes partitioned off by
cross-pieces into some six or eight compartments. Here we would put out
marrowbones, suet, shreds and scraps from the dinner-plates, nuts,
acorns, pinecones, grains, crumbs, fragments of cheese, and here, all
the long winter through, our welcome guests were chickadees,
nut-hatches, tree sparrows, downy woodpeckers, juncos, with an
occasional fox sparrow or purple finch or flock of Canadian crossbills.
Our unwelcome guests were English sparrows, of whom, however, we had
but few and those of rather subdued deportment; blue jays, who would
fly away with big pieces of meat or cocoanut, and the gray squirrels,
who would come stealing softly down the edge of the casement and
suddenly leap into the box. Here they would sit up on their haunches,
defying us through the pane with hard, black eyes, and gobble till they
could gobble no more. Then they would stuff their elastic cheeks almost
to bursting and make off with their plunder only to be back again
before the little birds, so long and so patiently waiting on the snowy
branches of the nearest tree, had really settled down to enjoy the
leavings.
Sigurd instinctively understood that the little birds were guests--to
the English sparrows he gave the benefit of the doubt--and that the
blue jays and squirrels were intruders. On a keen winter day, when the
boxes had been freshly filled, he was indeed an overworked collie,
scampering from room to room and window to window, barking furiously at
the raiders. This vociferous warning that no trespassers were allowed
sufficed for the blue jays, who would flap sullenly away, but the
squirrels were quick to learn that a bark was not a bite. Shadowtail
would only drop his nut and sit up erect and alert, his little fists
pressed to his heart, his beady eyes staring straight against the dog's
honest, indignant gaze. Seeing that his loudest roar had lost its
terrors, Sigurd would leap up toward the window and give it a
resounding thump with his paw. At first this new menace put the
squirrels to precipitate retreat. Off they went, nor stood upon the
order of their going. A few minutes later, one shrewd little gray face
after another would peer around the casement edge, but at the first
view of that upright, shining figure, with the flowing snow-white ruff,
mounting guard on chair or hassock, the goblin faces vanished. Sigurd
was immensely proud of himself during this epoch of the warfare. A very
Casabianca in his firm conception of duty, only the most imperative
summons could call him from his post. But when the squirrels had
learned that the barrier between the collie and themselves was, though
transparent, an effective screen, and would, as before, saucily plant
themselves in the middle of the box and resume the stuffing and
pillaging process more diligently than ever, under his very eyes,
Sigurd, frantic with fury, would beat an utterly tremendous tattoo upon
the pane. Three times one January he crashed through the glass in one
of my chamber windows, cutting his face and paws and subjecting the
room to a more Arctic ventilation than I cared for. On these occasions
the squirrels saved themselves by prodigious leaps into the nearest
tree and did not venture back while that jagged gap remained,--so
satisfactory a result, from Sigurd's point of view, that he marveled at
my folly in calling in a glazier to repair the damage. As the man was
working at the window, Sigurd would look from him to me with a puzzled
and reproachful expression accentuated by the long strips of court
plaster across his nose.
He had a vigorous ally in my mother, who brought her own bright wits to
bear on the circumvention of the enemy. She knitted a little bag,
filled it with nutmeats and hung it from the middle sash outside the
window, so that it dangled halfway down in the open space which gave
the squirrels no footing but delighted our winged pensioners. It was
fun to see two spirited fluffs squaring at each other atop a lump of
suet for the best chance to rise at the bag, till another plumy midget
came fiercely down upon them and drove them, chirping remonstrance, off
to the outer edges of the box. Then the newcomer, bristling with
victory, flew up and secured the most desirable position on that
swinging dinner-pail, while the others, nudging and scrambling, sought
for a footing on the further side. But the squirrels studied the
situation from above and from below and presently learned to run up the
blind, make a sidelong leap to the bag and cling to it with all four
legs and feet, while they gnawed through the threads until the goodies
literally poured into their mouths. There they would cling and feast,
while on the other side of the glass my mother and Sigurd, both of them
sharply protesting and angrily rapping the pane, held a Council of War.
As a result, my mother bought two iron sink-mops, wired them together
and triumphantly fashioned a bag which even the strong teeth of the
furry burglars, for all their persevering and ingenious efforts, could
not bite open. But the happy chickadees and nut-hatches would perch
there, by relays, all day long, thrusting their bills through the iron
interstices and drawing out, bit by bit, the finely broken nutmeats.
The blue jays were routed quite by accident. The support of my box, a
strip of wood running from the underside of that little feeding table
to the house wall, had loosened its lower nail, and one day, when some
passing touch of grippe kept me in bed, with Sigurd sitting upright on
a chair beside me, playing nurse, a plump jay lit heavily upon the edge
of the shelf and screeched with fright as it shook and slid beneath
him. He took to his glossy wings and, within five minutes, the oak hard
by was alive with our whole colony of blue jays, all eying that box and
deep in agitated discussion. At last one venturesome fellow struck
boldly out and lit on it, only to feel it sway and sag and, with a
shriek rivaling that of his predecessor, flapped up just in time to
save himself, as he believed, from a terrific disaster. This
performance was repeated twice more and then the whole blue jay crew
abandoned, for the rest of the winter, not only their attacks on my
particular bird box, though its support was promptly made secure, but
on all the bird boxes of the house. Sigurd and I were well content as
we heard them croaking to one another, "A trap! Jam my feathers, a
hateful, human trap! But they couldn't hoodwink _us_. Yah, yah, yah!"
The squirrels, however, continued to be Sigurd's chief household care.
Out of doors, too, he was forever chasing them, but never, to my
knowledge, so much as brushed the tail of one. In his sleep, he often
seemed to be dreaming of a squirrel hunt, his feet running eagerly even
while his body lay at full stretch upon the rug, and his breath coming
in short pants. Sometimes he would howl in nightmare slumbers, but
generally he appeared elate, climbing, perhaps, the trees of Dreamland,
less slippery than our icy oaks, and driving out his enemies from their
loftiest fastness.
Sigurd bore no grudges and when, as the pussy-willows, anemones and
violets, the robins and the orioles were bringing in the spring, he was
called upon to adorn a blue jay funeral procession, he wore his black
ribbon with decorum. The chief mourner, a little lad by name of
Wallace, was one of our nearest neighbors and most honored friends. He
had been much perturbed in spirit over the perils of the blue jay brood
whose nursery, so reckless were their parents, tilted precariously on a
pine branch that overhung a ledge just beyond one end of Wallace's
porch. He feared every wind would overthrow that nest, but when the
shocking old mother, apparently in a fit of temper, deliberately pushed
her children out herself, and they fell, one by one, to instant death
on the rock below, Wallace's grief and horror were too great for a
child's good. His resourceful father therefore proposed a grand
funeral, as the only testimony of regard and regret that we could offer
to the unlucky fledgelings, and Wallace, who was much preoccupied with
his future career, having at one time planned to be a dentist in the
forenoon, a musician in the afternoon, and an editor at night, entered
with enthusiasm upon the duties of undertaker, sexton, and clergyman.
Called upon for an anthem, I responded with a lament which Wallace
found "too sad" to hear more than twice. On the second occasion it was
intoned at the tiny grave, above which Sigurd drooped a puzzled head,
not understanding a game that had in it neither romp nor laughter.
Though fond of Wallace, our collie's bearing toward small boys in
general was not conspicuous for cordiality. Women he accepted as
essential to the running of the universe; men--except for those
vindictive monsters perched on express teams with long whips in
hand--he regarded with amiable indifference; but about small boys he
was dubious. Some of our rougher little neighbors had stoned and
snowballed the new puppy. At Christmas we met that situation by
converting Sigurd into Santa Claus,--dressing him up in holly ribbon
and sleighbells and hanging on him the little gifts which we were in
the way of taking about to the children on our hill. The immediate
effect was excellent. Sigurd was thanked and patted and, in his
pleasure at such appreciation, he would magnanimously lick the boyish
hands that had been so often raised against him. One urchin was so
impressed by a toy fire-engine that, at least through January, he
touched his cap to "Mr. Sigurd" whenever they met; but with Fourth of
July and Hallowe'en our troubles were all renewed. Firecrackers and
torpedoes are so disconcerting to collie nerves that no normally bad
boy could resist setting them off under Sigurd's very nose,
somersaulting with ecstasy to see his instantaneous bolt for home;
while on Hallowe'en all the youngsters on the hill would call in a
troop, weirdly disguised, swinging Jack-o'-Lanterns and banging,
scraping, whistling, piping, on strange instruments not of music. On
these distracting occasions Sigurd was ready to tear those giggling
spooks to bits, and either Joy-of-Life or I had to hold him tight,
while the other passed the cookies and candies for which our
supernatural visitants had come.
May Day was better fun for Sigurd. He quickly understood that the
Maybasket chase was only a game and played it with a vim. But in
general he did not care for festivals nor for any variation of the
usual round. Just everyday living was joy enough for him. If Sigurd had
made the calendar, the week would have been all Mondays. Even Christmas
puzzled more than it pleased him. Such a confusion of brown paper and
tissue paper, such a flourishing of queer, lumpy stockings, such
tangles of string, such excitement over objects that had no thrill for
his inquiring nose! And for himself, the rubber cats with gruesome
squeaks inside them, the mechanical beetles that shook his courage as
they charged at him across the floor! He could not make it out. Once
when all the people present were shouting with mirth over a new,
preposterous game of cards, Sigurd quietly picked up from under the
table a pack not yet called into service and carried it out into the
kitchen, where he was presently discovered with one forefoot set on the
cards tumbled about before him, while he gazed dejectedly down at them
in a defeated effort to find out why they were amusing. And the
Christmas parties, for which he had to be scrubbed until he shone like
an image of white and gold! And if it happened that, between his toilet
and the party, he whizzed off with Laddie, what unpleasantness on his
return!
"Sigurd was especially invited for to-night and I promised Wallace to
bring him. But he's too dirty now and he hasn't had his dinner."
"All his own doing. He shall come dirty and dinnerless and learn to be
ashamed of himself."
Not that he felt ashamed at all, but very tired and lame, hobbling
behind his family into a bright, chattering room, where everybody
wanted to pet him and where all he wanted was to be let alone to sleep
his frolic off. Why must he be waked up with foolish laughter because
that glittering tree, which he had not been allowed to investigate for
squirrels, had given, in his name, a toy ship to Wallace, whose father,
Professor Wit, must needs observe: "How like dear Sigurd, to present
his neighbors with his _barque_!" And though for him the Christmas
tree bore a chocolate caramel in the inmost box of a nest of boxes, he
would, to the disappointment of the company who had heard of his skill
in opening parcels, yawn and fall asleep over each box in turn. At his
best, he bit drowsily into the pasteboard and pushed at the string more
clumsily than usual with a pair of grimy paws from which the circle of
silken skirts would draw away. Christmas, indeed, and an inaccessible
chocolate caramel for dinner!
Sigurd's most thrilling adventures, naturally, had to do with dogs, but
cats were an interesting side issue. The self-protective qualities of
the feline race I realized on our first Sunday walk with the puppy,
when a gray kitten bobbed up in our path. Sigurd romped forward,
Joy-of-Life caught him by the collar, and I, for my sins, picked up the
kitten. It looked so tiny, helpless and soft; it felt like a frame of
steel and wire, every little muscle tense, while its claws flashed out
like daggers and ripped up the back of my hand. In due time Sigurd
learned how formidable a cat may be. If she ran, he pelted after until
she took refuge up a tree, but if she proved to be some shrewd old
grimalkin who held her ground he suddenly slackened his pace and
sauntered casually by, trying to look as if he did not see her.
His one constant dog friend was Laddie. Their escapades were the top of
all adventure,--such orgies of wild joy that I would gladly lie awake
again listening for the hoarse bark of our returning prodigal. But with
other dogs of his own sex, acquaintance, however affably begun, would
soon ripen into a fight, unless the new comrade were too small and weak
or had reasons of his own for declining the test of battle. With Gyp,
across the way, a sly little black and tan, well-named, for his
ancestors must have run with the Romany folk and bequeathed to him a
genius for thievery, Sigurd did not take the trouble to quarrel. Gyp,
always skulking about our premises, would make off with any of our
lighter possessions carelessly left on porch or lawn. We had suffered
these losses without redress--for to the dog's master, only too ready
to beat poor Gyp cruelly on the least provocation, we would not make
complaint--till Sigurd came. He had been with us barely a week when,
one afternoon, as we were reading under the trees, Joy-of-Life reached
a hand behind her for her parasol. It was not there. As we both
exclaimed, questioned and looked about under the shrubbery where the
wind, had there been a wind, could not possibly have blown it, our new
guardian stood watching our
"unsuccessful pains
With fixed considerate face,
And puzzling set his puppy brains
To comprehend the case."
Suddenly he caught sight of Gyp trying with guilty haste to get a long
object, balanced in his jaws, through a favorite hole in his backyard
fence. It was never done, for Sigurd was upon him in a twinkling, had
shaken him thoroughly and brought back the parasol essentially
unharmed. Several times again he recovered our goods and chattels,
invariably giving the culprit a vigorous shaking, but otherwise keeping
on neighborly terms with the little scamp, till life ended for Gyp in a
kick from his drunken master's boot.
With another neighbor, black Rod, a noble St. Bernard, the initial
friendship was soon broken. The two dogs were of about the same age and
had many a frisk together that first summer, but when Rod tried to join
us on our walks, Joy-of-Life, who thought one big puppy enough for
amateurs to handle, would sternly bid Rod, "Go home." Sigurd would
promptly spring to enforce the command, and Rod would slowly and
sulkily retreat. After a few of these experiences, Rod ceased to follow
us, but he never forgave any one of the three. Thenceforth for the rest
of their lives the two dogs, who knew themselves almost equally matched
in size and strength, passed each other, often a dozen times a day,
with bristling backs and low, cautious growls, while never could my
friendliest greetings, even when I was alone, win the least wiggle of a
wag from Rod's rigid, remembering tail. He was so fortunate as to live
in a household of children, for whom he made the most faithful of
protectors, and often, on a sparkling winter day, I have met him
coasting with them, racing down the hill abreast of the sled, tail
waving, eyes gleaming, but the instant he became aware of my obnoxious
presence and observation, the tail would stiffen and the eyes would
cloud. His hostility was a genuine hurt to me, so much did I like and
respect the dog, but even in his old age, when pain and weakness lay
heavy on him, and the children--did he understand?--were teasing their
mother to have him chloroformed so that they might have in his place a
stylish young Boston bull, he would accept from me no comfort of touch
or tone. Another unhappy result of these early rebuffs was that Sigurd
got it firmly fixed in his yellow noddle that the words _Go home_ were
the profanest of curses, and whenever he was so addressed, especially
by one of us, his aspect of grief and horror was ludicrous to behold.
Besides, he did not go.
Through Sigurd our circle of fellowship was widened for all time. Here
we had been living on, half stifled in biped society, well-nigh unaware
of the jubilant dog world bounding about our feet, but in a few months
our own collie had made us acquainted with a democratic variety of
canine types. And still I would almost rather meet a new dog than a new
poet. A certain Norwegian lake is twice as dear to memory for the
courteous Great Dane that did the honors of the bank and shared our tea
cakes there; the only duchess to whose boudoir, at the heart of a
frowning Border castle, we were ever invited, impressed us less than
the three pompous poodles, their snowy curls so absurdly like her own,
that squatted on the edges of her flowing heliotrope morning-gown and
were simultaneously upset whenever one of her Ladyship's energetic
impulses brought her to her feet.
Sigurd's acquaintances were legion. To only a few may space be given
here. There was Teddy, a black spaniel who aspired to the high standard
of manners held by his master, a retired army officer, and, following
example, would punctiliously rise as ladies entered or left the room.
There were twin dachshunds, who daily drove abroad in a limousine and
enraged Sigurd by looking down on him, short-legged that they were,
from the window opened hardly wide enough to let them thrust their
black noses through the crack. There was the lean, forlorn old hound
whom all the dog-clubs blackballed and who, in consequence, had to
satiate his yearning for fellowship by keeping company with the
minister's cow. Every summer morning a silver-headed saint whose pulpit
labors were done escorted his Mulley down our hill and tethered her in
the broad green pasture below. At a respectful distance would follow
the homeless hound, who had picked up during the night what sustenance
he could from the neighborhood garbage pails. And hard of heart we
deemed that neatest of our housewives who, to keep his meddling muzzle
away, used to scatter a profusion of red pepper over her garbage. All
day long the hound would stay in the meadow close to the cow, who,
uneasy at first under his attentions, came to accept them with bovine
placidity. Indeed, there was, we thought, a certain coquetry in her
carriage as, a person of importance, she came sedately stepping up the
hill at sunset, the old clergyman on one side and the old dog on the
other. Her friendship with the happy hound grew to be as famous in our
local annals as, in the realm of books, is that of the horse and hen
related by White (in his _Natural History of Selbourne_), or that of
the swan and trout so poignantly told by Hudson (in his _Adventures
Among Birds_).
Certain dogs Sigurd would bully shamelessly, like amiable old Bounce,
on whom he would hurl himself in Bounce's own yard and sit on top of
him, growling most offensively, until we pulled him off. To the
subsequent scolding Sigurd would listen as long as it interested him
and then press up against us and offer his paw, as if to say, "All
right; enough of that; let's be friends again."
On the other hand, he had such a liking for our Professor Far-Away that
he stretched his regard to cover her successive dogs, Chum and Jack,
though he was born too late to know her beautiful black collie,
Wallace. He would even allow Chum, an adopted stray, a nondescript
animal of preposterous awkwardness, to drink from his own Japanese
bowl, spattering the water, in Chum's uncouth fashion, half across the
hall, while Jack, an Irish terrier,
"With the soul in the shining eyes of him,"
ranked in Sigurd's esteem next after Laddie. Professor Far-Away, whose
perilous joy it was to traverse, with Jack, unexplored tracts of China
and Thibet, attended by a train of coolies, would, when dull destiny
called her back to the class room, effect brief escapes by way of
bicycle runs through the wood roads, attended by a train of dogs. When
her cavalcade swept by our hill, Sigurd would leap up as if at the call
of the Wild Huntsman and rush forth to fall in. Through her long
absences in foreign lands he never ceased to listen for her gypsy
whistle, and once, at least, he was literally her first caller on her
return. He came tearing back to his own family, in high excitement,
with a traveler's tag waving from his collar. The tag was penciled over
with the Wanderer's greeting, adding "how dear it was of Sigurd" to be
barking at her door within ten minutes after she and Jack had crossed
their threshold. When Professor Far-Away writes _The Junketings of
Jack_, there will be a book worth reading.
Although our puppy had several times returned with a scratched face,
after encounters with veteran cats, his first fight was with Major, a
rugged brindle bull, who lorded it over all the dogs in town. We had
been warned of Major and when, one September morning, I went to the
door in answer to the now familiar _woof_, I knew, even without the
uplift of Sigurd's eloquent look, what had happened. He was dripping
with blood, his own and Major's, and dragged one hind leg painfully,
yet he had an air of expecting congratulations. We bathed and
disinfected his wounds as well as our inexperience could--in the course
of the next few years we became experts at canine first aid--but the
injury to the leg looked so serious that we called in Dr. Vet, who
found that one of Major's tusks had penetrated the joint. The leg was
packed in an antiphlogistic clay until it looked more like an
elephant's leg than Sigurd's and was secured from the investigation of
his own inquisitive teeth by broad bands of plaster and innumerable
yards of bandages. The proud sufferer, who, claiming that he was now
entitled to all sick privileges, had insisted on taking to my bed, lay
there on a fresh rug, anxiously watching every movement of the doctor's
hands but enduring even the probing without protest.
After AEsculapius had gone and the rest of the family were gathered
about the invalid, who, despite all smarts and aches, keenly relished
being the center of attention, Joy-of-Life and I sallied forth to
inquire for Major. That redoubtable little ruffian, cuddled into his
basket, rolled up doleful eyes from a gory lump that bore but small
resemblance to his massive, wrinkled, pugnacious head. A beholder of
the battle reported that as Sigurd was trotting innocently across a
vacant lot, a brighter spot of yellow weaving its path through the
goldenrod, Major, after his wonted manner of attack, came sneaking up
behind and gripped him by the joint of a hind leg. Sigurd wheeled,
catching and crushing Major's head between his own powerful jaws, and
then the two dogs, locked in furious combat, spun round and round, a
snarling whirligig, gathering a vociferous group of ineffective
dissuaders, until a grocer's boy, jumping down from his delivery wagon,
came rushing up with a packet of pepper, hurling its contents into
Sigurd's nostrils and, through his literally open countenance, into
Major's. In a spasm of sneezing, the circle of dog broke apart, and
each dilapidated fragment made for home. Sigurd was a week or more in
getting well and he limped for a month after, but the scars on Major's
head were in evidence longer yet. They never matched prowess again,
though the language that they would use to each other, especially with
a wide road between them, is not fit for print.
Every evening of that first week our hero was carried or helped
downstairs and put to bed on the piazza, but every morning he crawled
and scrambled up again, crying out like a child as his injured leg,
trailing behind him, suffered jar or bump. Nobody could resist his
pleading to be lifted back to the bed and allowed to play hospital a
little longer, and Cecilia, more than ever his devoted slave, delighted
in bringing him, to his enormous pride, his dinner on a tray. He always
barked for the family to come in and behold that glorious spectacle,
and he barked, too, whenever the door bell rang, requesting the caller
to come up at once and pay respects to the Happy Warrior. Apart from
these red-letter events, his great diversion was trying to rid his
muffled leg of the bandages and plaster,--an exercise in which he soon
became only too proficient.
In Sigurd's last fight--with a gallant old mastiff, Rex--one of his
forelegs, bitten in three places, was put out of action for two months,
but no fuss was made about it. We had grown hardened to Sigurd's
battle-wounds. Sulpho-naphthol and his own tongue worked the cure,
though it took no little ingenuity to extract from between Sigurd's
teeth the stray tufts of grizzled hair that he wanted to keep as
souvenirs of Rex, who, still feebly growling, had to be fetched off the
field in a wheelbarrow.
From first to last, Sigurd's adventures were too often misadventures.
As a youngster, he was continually getting into trouble. It seemed
unfortunate that he should have so many feet, for what with thorns,
tacks, broken glass, jagged ice and the like, one or another of them
was usually in piteous condition.
His name brought more than one fight upon him, as our call of _Sigurd!_
_Sigurd!_ when he started out to investigate a dog-stranger, was often
mistaken for _Sick 'em!_ _Sick 'em!_ and the dog's owner would
reciprocate in kind. Once an indignant father, a summer visitor in
the town, passionately charged us with setting our dog on his two
"motherless boys," whereas we had been doing our best to call Sigurd
off from a chase after those provoking little rascals, who had attacked
him with a shower of pebbles.
Restless with his waxing strength he took to roving in the woods, where
once he was caught in a trap and painfully dragged himself home with a
lacerated leg that he had torn free from the cruel grip of the steel.
In the West Woods he once had a narrow escape. He was seen by a
wandering botanist to plunge into a swampy hole for water, a beverage
that, in spite of our hygienic warnings, Sigurd seemed to prefer with a
flavor of dirt. The mire there has a quicksand quality, and Sigurd
sank, splashing in frantic struggle, until only his nose was barely
visible above the black ooze, but in that extremity he seemed to get a
momentary hold for his hind feet, perhaps on root or snag, and by a
desperate effort lurched himself up and out. He lay on the bank,
panting and trembling, a sorely spent collie, for thirty-five minutes
by the botanist's watch, before he revived sufficiently to roll over
and over in the ferns and rub off some of the mud. Even so, when he
reached home he was so smeared and malodorous with mire that, all
unwitting of the mortal peril from which he had emerged, we met him
with a scolding, scoured him off with newspapers and shut him out of
doors for the rest of the day.
We grew to dislike the progress of civilization, so much did trains,
trolleys, golf-balls and motors add to our anxiety, but his own supreme
aversion was, in his early years, the bicycle. On a certain summer day,
when a deeper trouble than Sigurd could understand brooded over the
house, he trotted down to the forbidden center of the town, The Square,
in quest of entertainment. As he was crossing, there came upon him from
one side a carriage and from the other a bicycle, whose rider, a
Canadian, turned in his flurry the wrong way. Out of the resultant
crash Sigurd sprang to the sidewalk, but the bicycle reeled after him
and, in falling, struck him so sharply as to leave a long black bruise
under one eye. An observer of the collision told us that Sigurd
"flashed off toward home like a streak of sulphur." As soon as the door
was opened in response to his frantic barking, he bolted upstairs and
took refuge under my bed. The household in its grieved pre-occupation
forgot all about him, and it was not until evening that he stole down
into the family circle. With a careless glance at the black mark, we
rebuked him for having a smutty face. The wistful look of the
misunderstood came into those amber eyes, but he comforted himself with
a belated dinner and waited for Time to tell his story. The bruise
lasted long and the fright still longer. More than a year later
Joy-of-Life and I were driving through the tranquillities of an Indian
summer afternoon, with Sigurd, by this time a strong and rapid runner,
far ahead. Suddenly we saw him tearing back in terror. Without waiting
for us to pull up, he bounded over the wheel into the phaeton and
pressed his shaking body close against our knees. As we drove on, we
looked to right and left for the hippogrif that had so appalled him,
and presently beheld it,--a riderless bicycle leaning against a garden
wall.