It was on the afternoon of the eighth day of Baby Marise’s life that Dick came into the room carrying a covered wicker basket. Klyda had no interest in him or in what he was carrying—even when he set down the basket on the edge of the bed and lifted its cover. Sleepily she looked at him, ready to drop into another doze.
Into the opened basket went Dick Snowden’s hand, to take out the contents. But the contents saved him the effort.
Out from the depths of the basket sprang a fluffy gold-and-white ball of dynamic energy. It wavered dizzily on the wicker edge, then catapulted clumsily to the counterpane, where it caught sight of Klyda’s colourless little face set in a halo of tumbled sunlit hair.
With the awkward canter of a badly made patent toy, the ball of fluff danced sidewise up the counterpane until it reached the white little face, which it proceeded to lick ecstatically with a very small and very pink tongue.
By this time Klyda’s weary brain had registered the fact that the new arrival was a two-months-old collie pup—also that it was doubtless the same collie pup which Dick had promised, a month ago, to buy for her.
The gift was one on which Klyda had set her heart; from the day she and her husband had chanced to pass by some neighbouring collie kennels and had seen a litter of month-old puppies playing with their dam in one of the wire runs. Instantly, she had taken a violent fancy to this particular pup. It was then too young to leave its mother, but Dick had secured the owner’s promise to sell it to him, as soon as the youngster should be weaned.
The promise had delighted Klyda. She had named the puppy Jock and had decreed that he should be Baby’s guardian and chum.
Yet, since then, so many things had happened! And now the arrival of the once-coveted pup meant nothing to Klyda at all—except that she did not like to have her wan face licked, nor to be patted at by a set of clumsy and shapeless white forepaws.