Then the Seraph disappeared, as all his student lovers, one after another, would disappear. Letters came back to him and gifts, but he could not puzzle out what these had to do with the dancing playmate no longer to be found on hillside or by lake. Nor could he foresee the day when that ridiculous Puck, grown into a noble collie, would in his turn sorely miss the Seraph, who had sailed away, on the ship that bore another of Sigurd's most devoted Wellesley lassies, to France. There were dogs on that ship, Professor Peggy and her scarred comrades, veterans of war, that had been sent over, like wounded French officers, to instruct, and were now returning to duty at the front. But Puck, too old for the Red Cross training, was left behind, sniffing up and down the garden paths in patient search for his dainty mistress, who, arrayed in gas-mask and trench-helmet, was serving from a battered camionette hot coffee and cocoa to our boys in khaki just behind the trenches.
In the Orchard, too, the venerable Cousin for whom Sigurd since puppyhood had cherished a romantic attachment, the white-haired inamorata whom he would run to meet with his most grotesque waggle, was no longer to be found in the familiar nooks from which Laddie had long since disappeared. And now that the all-beloved Elder Sister lay mortally ill, Sigurd pattered over day after day to look in at the sickroom and invite a stroking from the delicate hand that would rest so languidly upon his lifted head. Sometimes he carried her a yellow chrysanthemum or a cluster of cream-colored tea-roses tied to his collar. And when she had passed to Paradise through brain-wandering memories of Italy, as through a vestibule of beauty, Sigurd coaxed long at the closed door, whining softly, calling to his friend, troubled by the silence but incredulous of death.
Because of their vanishing ways, Sigurd had early come to look on college girls in general as an inconstant factor in life and accepted their attentions with the casual air of a confirmed old bachelor, but his faithfulness to his friends of riper age never wavered. Even to the last he always raised for the Lady of Cedar Hill his rapturous lyric cry, though it would sometimes embarrass him by breaking into a hoarse and husky squeak. He had special ways with each of us. He kept one piquant game for my mother, who, while he wagged his tail in ever wilder circles at her, would wag her Congregationalist in exact mockery at him, until he would make a maddened leap and snatch that sacred sheet from her hand.
But he was gentle with old people, even in his frolics, and from the first had felt a certain responsibility for their safety. Joy-of-Life had left him late one afternoon, while he was still a youngster, to guard her mother's nap on the piazza couch, but a white flash of Laddie, temptation incarnate, at the foot of the hill, had sent him careering off into the gloaming. Rising hurriedly to call him back, confused by the sudden waking, his charge had missed her footing in the dusk and fallen down the steps. Her first clear consciousness was of Sigurd standing over her, licking her face and hands with a penitent tongue, nor would he leave her all that evening, lying on the edge of her dress as she sat and trotting close beside her whenever she crossed the room. And when, touched by his concern, she bent to him and said: "I wasn't really hurt, and Sigurd was a good dog to come back," he joyously flopped over on his spine and presented his snowy shirt-front for a forgiving pat.
A household dear to Sigurd was that in which two of our college professors, long retired, dwelt in sisterly affection. He bore himself with the utmost discretion there, as if aware of a dignity and fragility beyond the wont of households. The classicist, whose Greek precision of accent gave beauty to her least remark, would introduce Sigurd to callers from abroad as "one of our most distinguished citizens," while the botanist, prisoned in a hooded chair on wheels,—ah, the feet that had so often and so lightly carried her in a day over twenty miles and more of the green earth she loved!—liked to have him escort her on her pathetic airings. He was not with her, but attending his own family on a drive one day, when we saw in the village square before us a sudden commotion, people running from all sides toward that familiar little carriage, which, rashly left standing at the edge of the curb with its hood open toward the wind, had been overset, so that the poor lady, strapped to the seat, was standing on her bonnet. Sigurd reached her first of all and when, shocked by the jar into a momentary oblivion, she looked up, "it was," she afterward said, "right into the kindest, most reassuring brown eyes in the world," for Sigurd's head was drooping close above her own and all the help that a collie could give beamed in his friendly gaze.
Hints of age began to appear, reluctant though we were to recognize them, in Sigurd himself,—an inclination toward longer and longer naps in his own disreputable chair, an increasing resentment of sweeping days and housecleaning, and a tendency, long after a swollen ear or a sharp attack of eczema was cured and Sigurd, settling his chin on his paws, had dismissed Dr. Vet with a low, majestic sweep of tail, to continue to claim the lazy privileges of an invalid. Sometimes his stiffening limbs failed to fold themselves with the old comfort into the hollow of his chair, and he would look up to us in puzzled appeal. He was a handsome collie still, but his manners had grown more reserved and his bearing more stately. He was no longer excited by Commencement festivities, though he would stroll up to take a look at the Tree Day dances and saunter into the Garden Party, accepting the embraces of old friends and new with an amiability only slightly tinged with boredom. But he loved more and more to bask in the sun on the south porch or to dream, his legs tied into his favorite bowknot, in front of the study fireplace, where Joy-of-Life's annual barrel of Christmas driftwood made the flames look like little rainbows on a holiday.
He was almost ten years old when he was run over by an automobile. Except for a bruised paw he did not seem to be hurt, for he crouched so flat in the road that the machine merely scraped his back, but his nerves were severely shaken. When we came home that noon, he greeted us with a prolonged, strange howl, unlike anything that we had ever heard from him before, and for weeks would not venture out upon the roads without one of us to serve as bodyguard, wheedling until we had to drop our books and devise some respectable excuse for a walk. Left behind at a Greek Letter Society House one evening, he refused to start off for home alone—the bold ranger of a thousand midnights—and his indulgent girl hostesses telephoned for a carriage, so that Sigurd came proudly driving up to his front door in a hack. He so enjoyed the extra petting that came with any mischance that he affected, when it occurred to him, this terror long after it had faded out, just as he would in running tuck up an injured foot, when he happened to think of it, weeks after it was healed, and hop plaintively on three legs until the sight of a cat or a squirrel made him forget all about it.
Sigurd had several promising sons in the village, and one of these we would gladly have adopted had not our delight in its puppy graces nearly broken his jealous old heart. So we let it go to other admirers and presently lost all trace of his golden scions. But one day, when I was walking with him, a winsome little lad came up and, touching his cap, asked shyly if he might stroke Sigurd, "for he's the papa of my dog Trusty that died." Poor Trusty was a victim of distemper, and the child softly told us all about it, his arms about the neck of Sigurd, who put on an appropriate expression of bereavement.
The burden of the years brought its own compensation. Instead of the darkling escapades that used to distract and worry us, Sigurd became the best of company, in the depths of a winter night. Joy-of-Life was the lark of the household, and I the owl, so our self-appointed caretaker, after seeing her early to bed, would come downstairs again to lie close against my feet, inviting confidences. When I became too absorbed in my task to answer his remarks, he would still hold forth in a broken conversational grumble, contented, for reply, with the crackling of the fire and the scratching of a pen.
Nor was Sigurd the only one of our blithe fellowship for whom Time was quietly setting up milestones along the changing road. He was still in his prime when, on a date of gleaming memory, the Dryad gave at Norumbega Hall a birthday party for my mother, a party musical with our Poet's own sweet and roguish songs, not only in honor of