doorway. "It is of no consequence."

She spoke nervously, her rich contralto voice shaken by the dog's
fierce show of enmity. Then she vanished into the church; and
Mahan and Vivier took turns in lecturing Bruce on his shameful
dearth of courtesy.

The big dog paid no heed at all to his friends' discourse. He was
staring sullenly at the doorway through which the nurse had gone.

"That's one swell way for a decently bred dog to treat a woman!"
Mahan was telling him. "Least of all, a Red Cross nurse! I'm
clean ashamed of you!"

Bruce did not listen. In his heart he was still angry--and very
much perplexed as well. For he knew what these stupid humans did
not seem to know.

HE KNEW THE RED CROSS NURSE WAS NO WOMAN AT ALL, BUT A MAN.

Bruce knew, too, that the nurse did not belong to his loved
friends of the Red Cross. For his uncanny power of scent told him
the garments worn by the impostor belonged to some one else. To
mere humans, a small and slender man, who can act, and who dons
woman's garb, is a woman. To any dog, such a man is no more like
a woman than a horse with a lambskin saddle-pad is a lamb. He is
merely a man who is differently dressed from other men--even as
this man who had chirped to Bruce, from the church steps, was no
less a man for the costume in which he had swathed his body. Any
dog, at a glance and at a sniff, would have known that.