“I was only wondering,” she made hesitant answer, “if a box of very wonderful cigars, sent to him with our cards, mightn’t perhaps—­”

“It’s a fine sportsmanly proposition!” laughed the Master.  “When women get to ruling the world of sport, there’ll be no need of comic cartoons.  Genuine photographs will do as well.  If it’s just the same to you, dear girl, we’ll let Symonds buy his own cigars, for the present.  The dog-show game is almost the only one I know of where a judge is practically always on the square.  People doubt his judgment, sometimes, but there is practically never any doubt of his honesty.  Besides, we want to get the exact dope on Bruce. (Not that I haven’t got it, already!) If Symonds ‘gates’ him, I’m going to offer him for sale at the show.  If nobody buys him there, I’m going—­”

“He hasn’t been ‘gated’ yet,” answered the Mistress in calm confidence.

At the little spring show, at Hampton, a meager eighty dogs were exhibited, of which only nine were collies.  This collie division contained no specimens to startle the dog-world.  Most of the exhibits were pets.  And like nearly all pets, they were “seconds”—­in other words, the less desirable dogs of thoroughbred litters.

Hampton’s town hall auditorium was filled to overcrowding, with a mass of visitors who paraded interestedly along the aisles between the raised rows of stall-like benches where the dogs were tied; or who grouped densely around all four sides of the roped judging-ring in the center of the hall.

For a dogshow has a wel-nigh universal appeal to humanity at large; even as the love for dogs is one of the primal and firm-rooted human emotions.  Not only the actual exhibitor and their countless friends flock to such shows; but the public at large is drawn thither as to no other function of the kind.

Horse-racing, it is true, brings out a crowd many times larger than does a dogshow.  But only because of the thrill of winning or losing money.  For where one’s spare cash is, there is his heart and his all-absorbing interest.  Yet it is a matter of record that grass is growing high, on the race-tracks, in such states as have been able to enforce the anti-betting laws.  The “sport of kings” flourishes only where wagers may accompany it.  Remove the betting element, and you turn your racetrack into a huge and untrodden lot.

There is practically no betting connected with any dogshow.  People go there to see the dogs and to watch their judging, and for nothing else.  As a rule, the show is not even a social event.  Nevertheless, the average dogshow is thronged with spectators.  (Try to cross Madison Square Garden, on Washington’s Birthday afternoon, while the Westminster Kennel Club’s Show is in progress.  If you can work your way through the press of visitors in less than half an hour, then Nature intended you for a football champion.)