Six weeks afterward The Place's car brought Dick Hazen across to receive his long-lost pet.
The boy was thinner and shakier and whiter than when he had gone to sleep with his cherished puppy curled against his narrow chest. But there was a light in his eyes and an eagerness in his heart that had not been there in many a long week.
Lass was on the veranda to welcome him. And as Dick scrambled out of the car and ran to pick her up, she came more than half-way to meet him. With a flurry of fast-pattering steps and a bark of eager welcome, she flung herself upon her long-vanished master. For a highbred collie does not forget. And at first glimpse of the boy Lass remembered him.
Dick caught her up in his arms—a harder feat than of yore, because of her greater weight and his own sapped strength,—and hugged her tight to his breast. Winking very fast indeed to disperse tears that had no place in the eyes of a self-contained man of twelve, he sputtered rapturously:
"I KNEW I'd find you, Lassie—I knew it all the time;—even the times when I was deadsure I wouldn't! Gee, but you've grown, though! And you're beautifuler than ever. Isn't she, Miss?" he demanded, turning to the Mistress with instinctive knowledge that here at least he would find confirmation. "Indeed she is!" the Mistress assured him.
"And see how glad she is to be with you again! She—"
"And Dad says she can stay with me, for keeps!" exulted Dick. "He says he'll put a new lock on the cellar door, so she can't ever push out again, the way she did, last time. But I guess she's had her lesson in going out for walks at night and not being able to find her way back. She and I are going to have the dandiest times together, that ever happened. Aren't we, Lass? Is that her little boy?" he broke off, in eager curiosity, as the Master appeared from the kennels, carrying Bruce.
The puppy was set down on the veranda floor for Dick's inspection.
"He's cunning, isn't he? Kind of like a Teddy Bear,—the sort kids play with. But," with a tinge of worry, "I'm not sure Ma will let me keep two. Maybe—"
"Perhaps," suggested the Mistress, "perhaps you'd like us to keep little Bruce, to remember Lass by? We'll try to make him very happy."