She frowned slightly and hoped Dick would take the obstreperous puppy away. But at sight of her frown the puppy evidently mistook the slight facial contortion for an invitation to play, for he braced himself on all four shapeless legs and made threatening little rushes at the frowning face, accenting his attacks with ferocious baby barks.
In spite of herself Klyda felt a vague amusement at the pup’s silly antics. She reached out a weak white hand to pet him. At the touch, Jock forgot he was a lion or whatever other furious wild beast he was pretending to be. He remembered only that he was very young and very far from home and mother, and that the caress of the tired hand was sweet. With a cluck of contentment, he cuddled close to Klyda’s face and curled up for a nap.
Dick, glad to have aroused his apathetic wife’s interest to even so mild an extent, stooped to pick up the puppy and carry him away. But Jock was in no hurry to go. So piteously did he look to Klyda for rescue that she bade her husband leave him there for the time. Whereat, by way of showing his thanks, Jock began again to play with her hand as it lay idle on the quilt.
Up to this time everybody had moved on tiptoe about the sick-room, and had talked in undertones. But Jock was no respecter of silence. He gambolled and barked to his heart’s content. Partly amused and partly annoyed by his bumptiousness, Klyda found herself for the first time unable to sink at will into that dreamy apathy of hers. It is hard to dream, when a tiny furry whirlwind is charging at one or is professing to believe that one’s white fingers are a mortal foe to be nibbled and threatened.
Thus it was, against her own will, that Klyda Snowden was shaken from her semi-coma. After that, youth and nature combined to keep her from sinking back into it. Probably she would have gotten well, anyhow. And certainly a noisy collie pup is not to be prescribed as a temporary roommate for a sick girl. But the fact remained that Klyda “turned the corner,” that very day, and forthwith grew better.
She had not discovered a new zest in life. Her husband and her new-born child furnished that. But she had been deprived of the luxury of drifting away. Action and annoyance and clownish gambols had chanced to supply the needed impetus to bring her back to normality.
Yet Dick and she always attributed her rally to the arrival of Jock. And they loved him accordingly. Instead of living in the green-painted kennel in the garden and seeing his owners for only a casual hour or so each day, he was brought up in the house and with hourly human companionship.
That sort of thing has a queerly humanising influence on a dog, especially if the dog be a thoroughbred collie.
From earliest puppyhood Jock learned to know the human voice in all its phases, and to read from experience its many shades of meaning. He learned, too, from constant hearing, the meanings of many simple words and phrases. He learned still more of human nature—all of which was wholly natural and has occurred to hundreds of house-bred collies.