If petting and praise and devoted attention could spoil a dog, Hero’s head would certainly have been turned that day, for friends and strangers alike made much of him.  A photographer came to take his picture for the leading daily paper.  Before nightfall his story was repeated in every home in Geneva.  No servant in the hotel but took a personal pride in him or watched his chance to give him a sly sweetmeat or a caress.  But being a dog instead of a human, the attention only made him the more lovable, for it made him feel that it was a kind world he lived in and everybody was his friend.

CHAPTER II

HERO’S STORY

Late that afternoon the Major sat out in the shady courtyard of the hotel, where vines, potted plants, and a fountain made a cool green garden spot.  He was thinking of his little daughter, who had been dead many long years.  The American child, whom his dog had rescued from the runaway in the morning, was wonderfully like her.  She had the same fair hair, he thought, that had been his little Christine’s great beauty; the same delicate, wild-rose pink in her cheeks, the same mischievous smile dimpling her laughing face.  But Christine’s eyes had not been a starry hazel like the Little Colonel’s.  They were blue as the flax-flowers she used to gather—­thirty, was it?  No, forty years ago.

As he counted the years, the thought came to him like a pain that he was an old, old man now, all alone in the world, save for a dog, and a niece whom he scarcely knew and seldom saw.

As he sat there with his head bowed down, dreaming over his past, the Little Colonel came out into the courtyard.  She had dressed early and gone down to the reading-room to wait until her mother was ready for dinner, but catching sight of the Major through the long glass doors, she laid down her book.  The lonely expression of his furrowed face, the bowed head, and the empty sleeve appealed to her strongly.

“I believe I’ll go out and talk to him,” she thought.  “If grandfathah were away off in a strange land by himself like that, I’d want somebody to cheer him up.”

It is always good to feel that one is welcome, and Lloyd was glad that she had ventured into the courtyard, when she saw the smile that lighted the Major’s face at sight of her, and when the dog, rising at her approach, came forward joyfully wagging his tail.

The conversation was easy to begin, with Hero for a subject.  There were many things she wanted to know about him:  how he happened to belong to the Major; what country he came from; why he was called a St. Bernard, and if the Major had ever owned any other dogs.

After a few questions it all came about as she had hoped it would.  The old man settled himself back in his chair, thought a moment, and then began at the first of his acquaintance with St. Bernard dogs, as if he were reading a story from a book.