The Baby's face puckered unhappily. Her pipestem arms went out toward the collie. In a tired little voice she called after him: "Dog! _Doggie!_ Come back here, right away! I love you, Dog!" Lad, vibrating with eagerness, glanced up at the Master for leave to answer the call. The Master, in turn, looked inquiringly at his nervous guest. Lad translated the look. And, instantly, he felt an unreasoning hate for the fussy woman. The guest walked over to her weakly gesticulating daughter and explained: "Dogs aren't nice pets for sick little girls, dear. They're rough; and besides, they bite. I'll find Dolly for you as soon as I unpack:" "Don't want Dolly," fretted the child. "Want the dog! He isn't rough. He won't bite. Doggie! I love you! Come _here!_" Lad looked up longingly at the Master, his plumed tail a-wag, his ears up, his eyes dancing. One hand of the Master's stirred toward the hammock in a motion so imperceptible that none but a sharply watchful dog could have observed it. Lad waited for no second bidding. Quietly, unobtrusively, he crossed behind the guest, and stood beside his idol. The Baby fairly squealed with rapture, and drew his silken head down to her face. "Oh, well!" surrendered the guest, sulkily. "If she won't be happy any other way, let him go to her. I suppose it's safe, if you people say so. And it's the first thing she's been interested in, since----_No_, darling," she broke off, sternly. "You shall _not_ kiss him! I draw the line at that. Here! Let Mamma rub your lips with her handkerchief." "Dogs aren't made to be kissed," said the Master, sharing, however, Lad's disgust at the lip-scrubbing process. "But she'll come to less harm from kissing the head of a clean dog than from kissing the mouths of most humans. I'm glad she likes Lad. And I'm still gladder that he likes her. It's almost the first time he ever went to an outsider of his own accord." That was how Lad's idolatry began. And that, too, was how a miserably sick child found a new interest in life. Every day, from morning to dusk, Lad was with the Baby. Forsaking his immemorial "cave" under the music-room piano, he lay all night outside the door of her bedroom. In preference even to a romp through the forest with Lady, he would pace majestically alongside the invalid's wheelchair as it was trundled along the walks or up and down the veranda. Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the Master's seat, at meals--a place that had been his alone since puppyhood--he lay always behind the Baby's table couch. This to the vast discomfort of the maid who had to step over him in circumnavigating the board, and to the open annoyance of the child's mother.