"Blest if I know! His sire, Commander, and his dam, Whisper, are as nice, normal, easy-tempered dogs as you could find anywhere, and their litters take after 'em—'cept this youngster, who sulks all day long off in some dark hole by himself and shakes if we speak to him. Nobody has mishandled the little chap so far's I've ever seen or heard, but the least thing—a shout or a rattle of tools or any fool noise—throws him into such a funk that all the rest of the puppies are getting panicky and the whole caboodle is running wild. There's no two ways about it. I've got to clear that born ninny out. I sold him a month ago to a lady for fifty dollars, but she brought him back in a week and said he was about as cheerful company as a tombstone. Now see here! You can have him for twenty, or for nothing, just as you feel after you've given him a try."
"But I don't want him. I shouldn't want him if he were the best dog in the country."
"Then I reckon I'll have to shoot him. I could give him away, but he's such a wretched, shivery little rascal that most any sort of folks would be too rough for him. 'Twould be kinder to put him out of the world and done with it. He's had seven months of it now and pretty well made up his mind that he don't like it. I did think maybe you might be willing to give him a chance."
I was surprised to hear my own voice saying into the telephone: "I'll try him for a few days, if you care to bring him over."
Yet I dreaded his coming. The friend who gave us Sigurd had offered us the past winter a very prince of puppies, the daintiest, most spirited, most winsome little collie that a free affection could ask, but Joy-of-Life and I could not make him ours. We could regard him only as a visitor in Sigurd's haunts, and the Lady of Cedar Hill, resenting the name of Guest which we had given him, re-named him Eric and took him to her own home. Here she soon won the utter devotion of his dog-heart, which, though now no longer beating, through that ardent and faithful love "tastes of immortality."
I was in the veranda off the study, trying to busy myself with my old toys of books and pen and paper, when the young collie was led in by a small girl, the only person at the kennels whose call he obeyed or whose companionship he welcomed. Deposited beside my chair, he promptly retreated to the utmost distance the narrow limits of his prison-house allowed, panting and quaking.
"Be good, Blazey," the child admonished him, stroking his head with a sunburned hand from whose light caress he at once shuddered away. "I'll come to see you by and by."
"By and by is easily said," the puppy made answer with incredulous eyes that first watched her out of sight and then rolled in anguish of despair from the wire screening of the porch to roof and wall.
"Is your name Blazey?" I asked him gently, but his fit of ague only grew worse as he turned his ghastly stare on me
"with a look so piteous in purport