Hetty had five brothers and sisters, and Champion, the dog, felt that he had too much to do. There were plenty of people in the cottage at Lenox, where they lived in summer, to take care of the children, but there is a certain sort of responsibility which dogs of good, sound character are not willing to intrust to anybody. The baby was always with his mother or nurse, and Champion found it easy to take care of the other little ones, for they were not allowed to venture outside of the garden gate, and if that were carelessly left open, he had only to station himself in front of it, and to gently tumble them over on the grass if they attempted to pass through it. He had never hurt them, and their mother thought that they could not be under any better protection than that of good old faithful "Cham."
But Hetty, who was seven years old, and Rudolph, who was nine, worried the dog terribly, and caused him to wear almost a perpetual scowl of anxiety upon his face. He evidently looked upon them as not old enough to be trusted by themselves, and it was a serious annoyance to him that they were too big to be rolled over on the grass, and so kept within the limits of the garden.
One lovely summer morning Hetty was missing. She had run away with a beautiful ripe plum, which her cousin Francis had picked in order to show her that the bloom upon it was exactly the color of old "Greylock" in the distance. So she climbed the nearest hill, to compare the colors of the mountain and the plum. Looking away over the valley, the child saw too much beauty all at once. Clasping her hands behind her, she took in a long sweet breath of morning air, and did not know what it was that filled her whole soul with joy. She laughed aloud up at the clear sky, and spreading her arms as if they were the wings of a bird, she ran down the hill-side. Oh, there were so many robins! And butterflies flew around her in little clouds. The fields were like fairy-land, they were so full of flowers. She picked baby daisies, and put them inside of the wild-carrot heads, not in blossom yet, which grew in the shape of nests. When she climbed over a stone wall to the road, a squirrel ran across her path, into the woods on the opposite side. "There!" she whispered, softly, "maybe I can find his hole." And she ran after him.
It was a great pity that Champion had so much to do that morning. When dinner was ready, and no Hetty appeared, Rudy called the dog, and asked, "Cham, where's Hetty?"
Champion whined piteously, and looked first down the road, then up at Rudy, and then down the road again.
"Come and eat some dinner, Rudy," said his mother, shading her eyes, and looking anxiously toward the woods. "Hetty will feel hungry, and come home soon now." But she looked proudly after Rudy when he clapped his hat on with a thump, and said, "Never you mind about me, mother; I'll eat more if I find Het first," and went racing after Champion, who bounded over the ground as if he meant to run all the way to the mountain.
At the edge of the woods Rudy waited, and whistled to Cham. "Hold on!" he said; "maybe she's hiding." And for a while he looked about the laurel bushes in the places where they were accustomed to play, and sang, lustily,
"A-roving, a-roving,
I'll go no more a-roving
With thee, fair maid."
But after a while he ceased his singing, and answered one of Champion's whines by ramming his hands in his pockets, and saying, "Look a-here, Cham! If anything has happened to Het, I'll—" The thought brought such a film over his honest brown eyes that he had to rub his cuff over them a good many times before he could see well enough to go on with his search. Fortunately, dogs don't cry tears, and Champion's eyes seemed to grow brighter as Rudy's grew dim. He seemed to say to himself: "If Rudy is going to give up, and cry about it, I've got to take matters into my own hands. Hetty's got to be found, and I can't waste my time waiting for a boy to get the better of his feelings. He oughtn't to have any feelings until after our business is settled!" And Champion gave Rudy's boot a good-by lick, and raced away alone.
Rudy dried his eyes, and had no more idea than the dog had of giving up the search. Dogs are just as apt to misunderstand boys as boys are to misunderstand dogs.