set of credentials, by itself.

Autumn froze into winter. The trees turned into naked black
ghosts; or, rather, into many-stringed harps whereon the
northwest gales alternately shrieked and roared. The fire-blue
lake was a sheet of leaden ice, twenty inches thick. The fields
showed sere and grayly lifeless in the patches between sodden
snow-swathes. Nature had flown south, with the birds; leaving the
northern world a lifeless and empty husk, as deserted as last
summer's robin-nests.

Lady, in these drear months of a dead world. changed as rapidly
as had the smiling Place, From a shapeless gray-gold fuzzy baby,
she grew lank and leggy. The indeterminate fuzz was buried under
a shimmering gold-and-white coat of much beauty. The muskrat face
lengthened and grew delicately graceful, with its long muzzle and
exquisite profile.

Lady was emerging from clownish puppyhood into the charm of
youth. By the time the first anemones carried God's message of
spring through the forests' lingering snow-pall, she had lost her
adolescent gawkiness and was a slenderly beautiful young collie;
small and light of bone, as she remained to the day of her death,
but with a slimness which carried with it a hint of lithe power
and speed and endurance.

It was in the early spring that the Master promoted Lady from her
winter sleeping-quarters in the tool-house; and began to let her
spend more and more time indoors.