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Page 22
Bruce, his left foreleg broken and a nasty assortment of glass-
cuts marring the fluffiness of his fur, was skillfully patched up
by the vet' and carried back that night to The Place.
The puppy had suddenly taken on a new value in his owners' eyes--
partly for his gallantly puny effort at defending the Mistress,
partly because of his pitiful condition. And he was nursed, right
zealously, back to life and health.
In a few weeks, the plaster cast on the convalescent's broken
foreleg had been replaced by a bandage. In another week or two
the vet' pronounced Bruce as well as ever. The dog, through
habit, still held the mended foreleg off the ground, even after
the bandage was removed. Whereat, the Master tied a bandage
tightly about the uninjured foreleg.
Bruce at once decided that this, and not the other, was the lame
leg; and he began forthwith to limp on it. As it was manifestly
impossible to keep both forelegs off the ground at the same time
when he was walking, he was forced to make use of the once-broken
leg. Finding, to his amaze, that he could walk on it with perfect
ease, he devoted his limping solely to the well leg. And as soon
as the Master took the bandage from that, Bruce ceased to limp at
all.
Meanwhile, a lawyer, whose name sounded as though it had been
culled from a Rhine Wine list, had begun suit, in Dr. Halding's
name, against the Mistress, as a "contributory cause" of his
client's accident. The suit never came to trial. It was dropped,
indeed, with much haste. Not from any change of heart on the
plaintiff's behalf; but because, at that juncture, Dr. Halding
chanced to be arrested and interned as a dangerous Enemy Alien.
Our country had recently declared war on Germany; and the belated
spy-hunt was up.
During the Federal officers' search of the doctor's house, for
treasonable documents (of which they found an ample supply), they
came upon his laboratory. No fewer than five dogs, in varying
stages of hideous torture, were found strapped to tables or
hanging to wall-hooks. The vivisector bewailed, loudly and
gutturally, this cruel interruption to his researches in
Science's behalf.
One day, two months after the accident, Bruce stood on all four
feet once more, with no vestige left of scars or of lameness. And
then, for the first time, a steady change that had been so slow
as to escape any one's notice dawned upon the Mistress and the
Master. It struck them both at the same moment. And they stared
dully at their pet.
The shapeless, bumptious, foolish Pest of two months ago had
vanished. In his place, by a very normal process of nature-magic,
stood a magnificently stately thoroughbred collie.
The big head had tapered symmetrically, and had lost its puppy
formlessness. It was now a head worthy of Landseer's own pencil.
The bonily awkward body had lengthened and had lost its myriad
knobs and angles. It had grown massively graceful.
The former thatch of half-curly and indeterminately yellowish
fuzz had changed to a rough tawny coat, wavy and unbelievably
heavy, stippled at the ends with glossy black. There was a
strange depth and repose and Soul in the dark eyes--yes, and a
keen intelligence, too.
It was the old story of the Ugly Duckling, all over again.
"Why!" gasped the Mistress. "He's--he's BEAUTIFUL! And I never
knew it."
At her loved voice the great dog moved across to where she sat.
Lightly he laid one little white paw on her knee and looked
gravely up into her eyes.
"He's got sense, too," chimed in the Master. "Look at those eyes,
if you doubt it. They're alive with intelligence. It's--it's a
miracle! He can't be the same worthless whelp I wanted to get rid
of! He CAN'T!"
And he was not. The long illness, at the most formative time of
the dog's growth, had done its work in developing what, all the
time, had lain latent. The same illness--and the long-enforced
personal touch with humans--had done an equally transforming work
on the puppy's undeveloped mind. The Thackeray-Washington-
Lincoln-Bismarck simile had held good.
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