Four barks, then, after a pause, another.
"Six!"
This was too much for the collie. She barked, I think, eight times, having quite lost her head.
"Pretty good, isn't it?" said Joy, as I congratulated Nokomis—on the neck, at the spot dogs love. "This is straight culture, you know, no trick. I don't give her any sign, as they do stage dogs. I'm just trying to see how far she can go. I've begun, too, to teach her colors, but I haven't succeeded very well."
"It's immensely interesting," I said. "I wonder why collies are so much more intelligent than other dogs."
"They aren't. Caniches are fully as bright, but collies have been trained for generations with the sheep, and it has raised the level of perception. That's why I try to keep up their education, for of course they'll deteriorate if they're only bred for exhibition purposes. But the training of the shepherds isn't everything. My theory is that the reason why a collie is quicker is because his eyes are trained. Most dogs, you know, won't use their eyes if they can use their noses or their ears. Hunting dogs will run past quarry that's in plain sight, following a scent without looking. A collie has to watch his sheep sharply, and his eye is developed. Their ears have been trained, too, by the shepherds."
"How long would Nokomis keep this up, obeying your orders?"
Nokomis, who had been resting inattentively, looked up immediately.
"As long as I asked her to—wouldn't you, old girl?" Joy rubbed the dog's neck with her toe. "A dog's chief joy is to be in some way, in as many ways as possible, a part of his master. I never knew Nokomis to tire of doing anything that kept up and accented that relation. It is the mainspring of a good dog's life—it accounts for a dog's devotion. It's trite enough to say, but there is no love on earth so sure as a dog's love. It's unending! it's unchangeable!"
Did Nokomis know, as she watched her mistress there, of that strange soul that stole into the girl's form at night? Did she answer for herself instinctively, with an animal's secret prescience, the question that Joy had asked in anguish—"Who is Edna?" The thought came into my mind as I heard Joy's words, pathetic in their unconsciousness of how the love of Nokomis waxed and waned with her own obsession. Surely Nokomis was loyal and true. Surely she had never betrayed her mistress' confidence. Perhaps the collie alone knew the secret of the White Cat.