He stretched himself and crossed to the Mistress' chair. There he sat down on the rug very close beside her and laid one of his ridiculously tiny white fore-paws in her lap. Absent-mindedly, still absorbed in her book, she put out a hand and patted the soft fur of his ruff and ears.
Often, Lad came to her or to the Master for some such caress; and, receiving it, would return to his resting-place. But to-day he was seeking to attract her notice for something much more important. It had occurred to him that it would be jolly to go with her for a tramp in the snow. And his mere presence failing to convey the hint, he began to "talk."
To the Mistress and the Master alone did Lad condescend to "talk"—and then only in moments of stress or appeal. No one, hearing him, at such a time, could doubt the dog was trying to frame human speech. His vocal efforts ran the gamut of the entire scale. Wordless, but decidedly eloquent, this "talking" would continue sometimes for several minutes without ceasing; its tones carried whatever emotion the old dog sought to convey—whether of joy, of grief, of request or of complaint.
To-day there was merely playful entreaty in the speechless "speech." The Mistress looked up.
"What is it, Laddie?" she asked. "What do you want?"
For answer Lad glanced at the door, then at the Mistress; then he solemnly went out into the hall—whence presently he returned with one of her fur gloves in his mouth.
"No, no," she laughed. "Not to-day, Lad. Not in this storm. We'll take a good, long walk to-morrow."
The dog sighed and returned sadly to his lair beneath the piano. But the vision of the forests was evidently hard to erase from his mind. And a little later, when the front door was open again by one of the servants, he stalked out.
The snow was driving hard, and there was a sting in it. The thermometer was little above zero; but the snow had been a familiar bedfellow, for centuries, to Lad's Scottish forefathers; and the cold was harmless against the woven thickness of his tawny coat. Picking his way in stately fashion along the ill-broken track of the driveway, he strolled toward the woods. To humans there was nothing in the outdoor day but snow and chill and bluster and bitter loneliness. To the trained eye and the miraculous scent-power of a collie it contained a million things of dramatic interest.
Here a rabbit had crossed the trail—not with leisurely bounds or mincing hops, but stomach to earth, in flight for very life. Here, close at the terrified bunny's heels, had darted a red fox. Yonder, where the piling snow covered a swirl of tracks, the chase had ended.