"He ought to make a fine pointer. His mother was a prize bird dog, you know."
Poor Setter Pup looked wistfully at Collie Dog as they flopped down on the floor.
And Collie was truly distressed. But, then, as he often asked himself:
"What could a poor dog do?"
[XXIV]
MRS. POLAR BEAR'S ADVENTURE
The long, dark winter was on the wane. Months of cold starlight and terrific winds, with numberless storms of heavy snow, had gone by. Little by little the streak of light on the horizon, the thin shadows which it cast over the snowfields, and the gentler quality of the air increased; so that every one who lived in this far Arctic region stirred in his winter sleep and there was preparation for a short and very busy summer.
Some of the animals had been abroad, indeed, throughout the whole dark night of the polar winter; such of them for instance as the lovely white fox and the great polar bear. For it was not their custom to crawl away, as many did, into the deep snow-banks, there to sleep it out; for they knew that even this season of blackness and appalling cold had plenty of food for them, and they were always insatiably hungry.
But Mr. Bear's wife was of a different turn of mind, and although she knew that her husband would not provide for her quite as she would like to be fed, she was willing to go deep into the snow and dig out for herself a warm bed away beneath the surface. There she had stayed, never so much as venturing to the opening after the real night had set in.