No sooner had I turned my attention to the accumulation of letters on my desk than again Sigurd pulled gently, yet with determination, at my skirt and insisted on a second promenade to the refrigerator.
"He really is hungry. How much have you been giving him for dinner?"
But when I saw the measure, I heaped his plate, while he eagerly watched the process, waving his tail in triumph, but hurrying once across the kitchen to snuggle his head against the knee of Housewife Honey-voice, looking up at her with those comprehending, trustful eyes that said:
"You didn't mean to starve dear Sigurd, and now that you know how big my hollow is, it will be all right forever."
Every autumn a new horde of freshmen fell in love with him and visiting alumnæ embraced him in mid-campus. Toward the Freshman Twins, who gladdened the Scarab one year, he conducted himself like a sophomore, humoring their childish ways, guiding them through the college labyrinth, serving as a towel for their homesick tears and partaking freely of their consoling fudge, but all with a comical air of condescension. He was himself accustomed to the best society, even seniors. Our gracious college president made him welcome to her veranda, as she sat at tea among her roses; a beloved frequenter of the Scarab, Hoops-of-Steel, though clinging to her preference for boys, accorded him a true if tempered friendship; and even Scholar Carol, our fifteenth-century historian, who affected the fireside sphinx and had named a particularly gallant kitten Eddy IV, counted him only a little lower than a cat. As for the children on our hill, they hugged him to the limit of endurance. His warmest admirer among them was Wee-wee, a rosy bunch of unweariable energy, who, when she came to us of an afternoon in order to give her exhausted parents a brief respite, would wear out the entire family as, one by one, we undertook to amuse her, and would finally fling herself upon Sigurd, riding on his back, rolling him over and over and examining his paws with an envious admiration that broke forth in the remark: "Wen I'm old and big like Sigurd, maybe I'll have feet on my hands."
For two lively years a brace of graduate students, Cherub and Seraph, folded their wings beneath the Scarab rooftree. Cherub was a bit afraid, at first, of "that bouncing yellow elephant," but Seraph instantly became Sigurd's very pink of playmates. Every morning they would start off early for the college library, scampering across the landscape at a rate that sent the sparrows fluttering from their path like so many irregular verbs. Between the meadow and the campus is a perilous stretch of railway tracks and trolley tracks, and here Sigurd would assume full charge of his companion. If the whistle of an engine, as they drew near the crossing, cut the air, Sigurd would leap upon her and, with his paws upon her breast, hold her back until the train had hurtled by, when he would lead her triumphantly across under the trailing plume of smoke. Every autumnal Sunday they spent hours together in the woods, from which the Seraph would bring home gentians, wych-hazel and a lyric, and Sigurd a ruff all tangled up with burrs. Winter did not daunt their zeal. They formed themselves into a rescue expedition and saved from the frost all manner of wild-flower roots, which the Seraph arranged in rows of pots placed on boards stretched from a little table in her room to her south window. Alas for sweet Saint Charity! There came a day when Sigurd, wishing to study the scenery to verify a suspicion of a dog burglar after his treasure-trove of bones, sprang up and struck his forefeet on the edge of the nearest board with such violence that the whole structure came crashing down, enveloping him in a flying ruin of pots and plants and earth and water. He did not stay to help the Seraph clear up the landslide, but remembered a pressing engagement in the remotest corner of the attic.
Through December these happy comrades explored the fringes of the forest for glowing vines to serve as Christmas decorations, and in the whirling snowstorms of a peculiarly ferocious little February they would come romping home, two white objects plunging through the drifts, looking like Peary and one of his huskies just back from the North Pole. Joy-of-Life had been in Egypt that winter, seeking health after a grave illness, but she came again with April, more welcome than the spring. Sigurd bounded to her shoulders in ecstasy of greeting, his coat ruddy in the sun. He shone more than ever with a supreme content as he sat erect between us while we motored through the miracle of May, under red-budded maples and oaks whose baby leaves, while the orioles shouted to them to hurry up, where trembling from misty pink to golden green. He did not care to run with the machine, however slowly it was driven, but saved his energies for the long rambles with the Seraph, as she went questing for anemone and dogwood, bellwort, violets, columbine, lady slippers and all
"our shining little sisters
Of the forest and the fields."
As the days grew warmer, he would forget the admonitions of previous springs and all his good resolutions, and take a roll, now and then, to Sister Jane's wrath and anguish, in a bed of jonquils or yellow tulips, claiming that their color made them his by royal right. When we scolded him, he took refuge with the Seraph, though even she was causing him bitter annoyance, as June and Commencement drew near, by her attentions to a fuzzy puppy, Puck, whom she visited almost daily at collie kennels two miles away. He was a prize puppy and it disgusted Sigurd beyond barks to see the fuss we all made over certain dog-show awards that Puck gave the Seraph to bring home, a green ribbon not worth the chewing and an empty cut-glass vase. When Puck, on the eve of Seraph's departure, was himself brought to the Scarab and a journeying basket was equipped for him, Sigurd sulked in the shabby depths of his dear old chair. All the small folk of our neighborhood flocked in to pat Puppy Ki-yi, as Joy-of-Life and I privily dubbed our guest, but only Wee-wee, whose own name for the mite was "Minister—Ittle Teeny Minister, coz he stan's on his back legs an' jiggles his arms an' pweaches at us," divined Sigurd's jealous misery. She snuggled down in the chair beside him, hugging the yellow ball into which he had rolled himself and solicitously explaining that "Minister is the best 'ittle dog, and Sigurd is the best gweat big dog," but the Volsung did not care for a divided homage and shook his ears at all puppy worshipers.