And she wondered whether the stray dog or the dangerous literature had most to do with that retreat.

Ann was pale and quiet the day after the dance, and it was not merely the languor of the girl who has fatigued herself in having a good time.

At luncheon Katie suddenly demanded: "Wayne, where do you get dangerous literature?"

"I don't know what form of danger you're courting, Katie. I have a valuable work on high explosives, and I have a couple of volumes of De Maupassant."

"Oh I weathered all that kind of danger long ago," said she airily. "I want the kind that is distressing editors of church papers. The man who edits this religious paper uncle sends me is a most unchristian gentleman. He devoted a whole page to talking about dangerous literature and then didn't tell you where to get it. Well, I'll try Walt Whitman.

He's very popular in the West, I'm told, and as the West likes danger perhaps he's dangerous enough to begin on."

"And you feel, do you, Katie, that the need of your life just now is for danger?"

"Yes, dear brother. Danger I must have at any cost. What's the good living in a dangerous age if you don't get hold of any of the danger?

This unchristian editor says that little do we realize what a dangerous age it is. And he says it's the literature that's making it so. Then find the literature. Only he--beast!--doesn't tell you where to."

Worth there requested the privilege of whispering in his Aunt Kate's ear.

The ear being proffered, he poured into it: "I guess the man that mends the boats has got some dangerous literature, Aunt Kate."

"Tell him to endanger Aunt Kate," she whispered back.

"Do you suppose there is any way, Wayne," she began, after a moment of seeming to have a very good time all to herself, "of getting back the money we spent for my so-called education?"

"It would considerably enrich us," grimly observed Wayne.

"When doctors or lawyers don't do things right can't you sue them and get your money back? Why can't you do the same thing with educators? I'm going to enter suit against Miss Sisson. This unchristian editor says modern education is dangerous; but there was no danger in the course at Miss Sisson's. I want my money back."

"That you may invest it in dangerous literature?" laughed Wayne.

After he had gone Ann was standing at the window, looking down toward the river. Suddenly she turned passionately upon Katie. "If you had ever had anything to _do_ with danger--you might not be so anxious to find it."

She was trembling, and seemed close to tears. Katie felt it no time to explain herself.

And when she spoke again the tears were in her voice. "I can't tell you--when I begin to talk about it--" The tears were in her eyes, too, then, and upon her cheeks. "You see--I can't--But, Katie--I want _you_ to be safe. I want you to be _safe_. You don't know what it means--to be safe."

With that she passed swiftly from her room.

Katie sat brooding over it for some time. "If you've been in danger," she concluded, "you think it beautiful to be 'safe.' But if you've never been anything but 'safe'--" Her smile finished that.

But Katie was more in earnest than her manner of treating herself might indicate. To be safe seemed to mean being shielded from life. She had always been shielded from life. And now she was beginning to feel that that same shielding had kept her from knowledge of life, understanding of it. Katie was disturbingly conscious of a great deal going on around her that she knew nothing about. Ann wished her to be 'safe'; yet it was Ann who had brought a dissatisfaction with that very safety. It was Ann had stirred the vague feeling that perhaps the greatest danger of all was in being too safe.

Katie felt an acute humiliation in the idea that she might be living in a dangerous age and knowing nothing of the danger. She would rather brave it than be ignorant of it. Indeed braving it was just what she was keen for. But she could not brave it until she found it.

She would find it.

But the next afternoon she went over to the city with Ann and found nothing more dangerous than a forlorn little stray dog.

It was evident that he had never belonged to anybody. It was written all over his thin, squirming little yellow body that he was Nobody's dog--written just as plainly as the name of Somebody's dog would be written on a name-plate on a collar.

And it was written in his wistful little watery eyes, told by his unconquerable tail, that with all his dog's heart he yearned to be Somebody's dog.

So he thought he would try Miss Katherine Wayneworth Jones.

She had a number of errands to do, and he followed her from place to place.

She saw him first when she came out from the hair-dresser's. He seemed to have been waiting for her. His heart was too experienced in being broken for him to dance around her with barks of joy, but he stood a little way off and wigglingly tried to ingratiate himself, his eyes looking love, and the longing for love.

Impulsively Katie stooped down to him. "Poor little doggie, does he want a pat?"

He fairly crouched to the sidewalk in his thankfulness for the pat, his tail and eyes saying all they could.

Then she saw that he was following her. "Don't come with me, doggie," she said; "please don't. You must go home. You'll get lost."

But in her heart Katie knew he would not get lost, for to be so unfortunate as to be lost presupposed being so fortunate as to have a home. And she knew that he was of the homeless. But because that was so terrible a thing to face, between him and her she kept up that pretense of a home.

When she came out from the confectioner's he was waiting for her again, a little braver this time, until Katie mildly stamped her foot and told him to "Go back!"

At the third place she expostulated with him. "Please, doggie, you're making me feel so badly. Won't you run along and play?"

The hypocrisy of that left a lump in her throat as she turned from him.

When she found him waiting again she said nothing at all, but began talking to Ann about some flowers in a window across the street.

Ann had seemed to dislike the dog. She would step away when Katie stopped to speak to him and be looking intently at something else, as if trying not to know that there were such things as homeless dogs.

Watts was waiting for them with the station wagon when they had finished their shopping. After they had gone a little way Katie, in the manner of one doing what she was forced to do, turned around.

He was coming after them. He had not yet fallen to the ranks of those human and other living creatures too drugged in wretchedness to make a fight for happiness. Nor was he finding it a sympathetic world in which to fight for happiness. At that very moment a man crossing the street was giving him a kick. He yelped and crouched away for an instant, but his eyes told that the real hurt was in the thought of losing sight of the carriage that held Katie Jones. As he dodged in and out, crouching always before the possible kick, she could read all too clearly how harassed he was with that fear.

They were approaching the bridge. The guard on the bridge would foil that quest. He would not permit a forlorn little yellow dog to seek happiness by following members of an officer's family across the Government bridge.

Probably in the name of law and order he would kick him, as the other man had done; the dog's bleared little eyes, eyes through which the love longing must look, would cast one last look after the unattainable, and then, another hope gone, another promise unrealized, he would return miserably back to his loveless world, but always--

"Watts," said Katie sharply, "stop a moment, please. I want to get something."

Ann was sitting very straight, looking with great absorption up the river when Katie got back in the carriage with her dog. Her face was pale, and, it seemed to Katie, hard. She moved as far away from the dog as she could--her mouth set.

He sat just where Katie put him on the floor, trembling, and looking up at her with those asking eyes.

When they were almost home Ann spoke. "You can't take in all the homeless dogs of the world, Katie."

"I don't know that that's any reason for not taking in this one," replied Katie shortly.

"I hate to have you make yourself feel badly," Ann said tremulously.

"Why shouldn't I let myself feel badly?" demanded Katie roughly. "In a world of homeless dogs, why shouldn't I feel badly?"

They made a great deal of fun of Katie's dog. They named him "Pet."

Captain Prescott wanted to know if she meant to exhibit him at a bench show and mention various points he was sure would excite attention.