dollars, for a high-pedigreed collie pup, was a joke price. But
no one else wanted Lass, and her feed was costing more every day.
According to Rothsay standards, the list of brood-females was
already complete. Even as a gift, the kennels would be making
money by getting rid of the prick-eared "second." Wherefore he
went to consult with the foreman.

Left alone with Lass, the boy opened the gate and went into the
run. A little to his surprise Lass neither shrank from him nor
attacked him. She danced about his legs in delight, varying this
by jumping up and trying to lick his excited face. Then she
thrust her cold nose into the cup of his hand as a plea to be
petted.

When the kennel-man came back, the boy was sitting on the dusty
ground of the run, and Lass was curled up rapturously in his lap,
learning how to shake hands at his order.

"You can have her, the boss says," vouchsafed the kennel-man.
"Where's the eleven dollars?"

By this graceless speech Dick Hazen received the key to the
Seventh Paradise, and a life-membership in the world-wide Order
of Dog-Lovers.

The homeward walk, for Lass and her new master, was no walk at
all, but a form of spiritual levitation. The half-mile pilgrimage
consumed a full hour of time. Not that Lass hung back or rebelled
at her first taste of collar and chain! These petty annoyances
went unfelt in the wild joy of a real walk, and in the infinitely