"Then they left their cards pinned to the dismantled machine's cushions;--in case Rhuburger cares to go further into the matter. While they were doing all that, the club's Governors had a hurry-call meeting. And for once the Board was unanimous about something. It was unanimous--in expelling Rhuburger from the club. Then we--By the way, where's Laddie? Curled up by Lady's grave, as usual, I suppose? Poor old dog!" "No," denied the Mistress. "He's asleep in his 'cave' under the piano. He went there, of his own accord. And he ate a perfectly tremendous supper, tonight. He's--he's CURED!" CHAPTER VIII. In Strange Company Lad was getting along in years. Not yet had age begun to claw at him; blearing the wondrous deep-set dark eyes and silvering the classic muzzle and broadening the shapely skull and stiffening the sweepingly free gait; dulling the sharp ears or doing any of the other pitiably tragic things that nature does to the dog who is progressing in his teens. Those, humiliations were still waiting for Lad, one by one; beyond the next Turn of the Road. Yet the romp and the spirit of bubbling fun and the lavishly needless exercise--these were merging into sobriety. True, at rare times, with the Mistress or the Master--especially with the Mistress, Lad would forget he was middle-aged and dignified; and would play like a crazy puppy. But, for the most part he had begun to carry his years a trifle seriously. He was not yet in the winter or even the Indian Summer of his beautiful life. But, at least, he had strolled into its early autumn. And this, be it well remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog for this abnormality, Nature decreed that his life should begin to fail, almost as soon as it had reached the glory of its early prime. A dog is not at his best, in mind or in body, until he has passed his third year. And, before he nears the ten-year mark, he has begun to decline. At twelve or thirteen, he is as decrepit as is the average human of seventy. And not one dog in a hundred can be expected to live to fourteen. (Lad, by some miracle, was destined to endure past his own sixteenth birthday; a record seldom equaled among his race.) And so to our story:-- When the car and the loaded equipment-truck drew up at the door, that golden October day, Lad forgot his advancing years. In a moment, he was once more a puppy. For he knew what it all meant. It did not need the advent of the Mistress and the Master from the house, in rough outing clothes, nor the piling of duffle-bags and the like into the car's tonneau, to send Laddie into a transport of trumpeting and gyrations. The first sight and sniff of the tents, rolled tight in the truck, had done that. Lad understood. Lad always understood.