Part 14 (2/2)

As she talked, the Mistress had moved toward the nearest

”See?” she finished, in triumph, as she pointed out and down

On the patch of back lawn, below, stood a very aze upraised to the study In one hand she carried a leash, in the other a half-peeled banana

”It's Mrs McMurdle!” exclaiht She must have disobeyed the ordinance and had the miserable otten out, this ; and she hunted around till she saw it perched on the top of thecornice

I suppose it dived back in here, at sight of her She--”

”Come on, Laddie!” whispered the Mistress, under cover of a new outbreak of multiple talk ”YOU'RE acquitted, anyhow And the rest of the scene is really no business of ours The sooner we get you to the boarding kennels again, the less chance there is of trouble And Master and I will coo back hoates of the Place This time, Lad rode in state atop the flat trunk on the rear seat As the car halted at the veranda, he sprang to earth without waiting for the tonneau door to be opened

For, dashi+ng toward hiht Behind her, and trotting ht and scent of her returned ht She whirled up to Lad, frantically licking his face and spinning about him with little staccato yelps of joy

Lad was deliriously happy Not only was he at ho him with an effusion that she had not shown him for many a sorrowful month He could not understand it Nor did he try to He was content to accept the reat honest heart

Knowing nothing of fey, he could not realize that a week of Puppy Wolf's sole and undiluted coet on her nerves;--nor that she had learned to entle h for Lad to know that he was no longer a neglected outsider, in the Place's canine family; but that his worshi+ped ain

”Look!” said the Master ”The old chap has forgiven her for every bit of her rottenness to him He's insanely happy, just because she chooses to make much of him, once more”

”Yes,” assented the Mistress, cryptically ”Sos are pitifully--human!”

CHAPTER VI The Tracker

The child's parents were going to Europe for threeover a nervous ailment The doctors had advised he be kept out of school for a term; and be sent to the country

His mother was afraid the constant travel froht be too much for him So she asked leave of the Mistress and the Master,--one of as her distant relative,--for the convalescent to stay at the Place during his parents' absence

That was how it all started

The youngster was eleven years old; lank and gangling, and blest with a fretful voice and with far less discipline and manners than a three-month collie pup His name was Cyril Briefly, he was a pest,--an unspeakable pest

For the first day or two at the Place, the newness of his surroundings kept Cyril more or less in bounds Then, as homesickness and novelty alike wore off, his adventurous soul expanded

He was very much at home; far more so than were his hosts, and infinitely eneral He had an infinite genius for getting into trouble Not in the delightfully nor boy; but in furtively crafty ways that did not belong to healthy childhood

Day by day, Cyril i around him The at, over the whole Place, was dispersed

The cook,--a ave tearful warning, and departed This when she found the insides of all her cooking utensils neatly soaped; and the sheaf of hoar-coupons

One of the workmen threw over his job with noisy blasphemy; when his room above the stables was invaded by stealth and a cooat's head substituted for his dead raph in the well-polished little bronze fra the line

The worst and most continuous sufferer from Cyril's loathed presence on the Place was the massive collie, Lad