and they came to the fence between the kennels and the stables, and laughed through the bars, barking most cruel words at me.  I couldn’t understand how they found it out, but they knew.  After the fight Jimmy Jocks was most condescending to me, and he said the grooms had boasted to the kennel-men that I was a son of Regent Royal, and that when the kennel-men asked who was my mother they had had to tell them that too.  Perhaps that was the way of it, but, however, the scandal was out, and every one of the quality-dogs knew that I was a street-dog and the son of a black-and-tan.

“These misalliances will occur,” said Jimmy Jocks, in his old-fashioned way, “but no well-bred dog,” says he, looking most scornful at the St. Bernards, who were howling behind the palings, “would refer to your misfortune before you, certainly not cast it in your face.  I, myself, remember your father’s father, when he made his debut at the Crystal Palace.  He took four blue ribbons and three specials.”

But no sooner than Jimmy would leave me, the St. Bernards would take to howling again, insulting mother and insulting me.  And when I tore at my chain, they, seeing they were safe, would howl the more.  It was never the same after that; the laughs and the jeers cut into my heart, and the chain bore heavy on my spirit.  I was so sad that sometimes I wished I was back in the gutter again, where no one was better than me, and some nights I wished I was dead.  If it hadn’t been for the Master being so kind, and that it would have looked like I was blaming mother, I would have twisted my leash and hanged myself.

About a month after my fight, the word was passed through the kennels that the New York Show was coming, and such goings on as followed I never did see.  If each of them had been matched to fight for a thousand pounds and the gate, they couldn’t have trained more conscientious.  But, perhaps, that’s just my envy.  The kennel-men rubbed ’em and scrubbed ’em and trims their hair and curls and combs it, and some dogs they fatted, and some they starved.  No one talked of nothing but the Show, and the chances “our kennels” had against the other kennels, and if this one of our champions would win over that one, and whether them as hoped to be champions had better show in the “open” or the “limit” class, and whether this dog would beat his own dad, or whether his little puppy sister couldn’t beat the two of them.  Even the grooms had their money up, and day or night you heard nothing but praises of “our” dogs, until I, being so far out of it, couldn’t have felt meaner if I had been running the streets with a can to my tail.  I knew shows were not for such as me, and so I lay all day stretched at the end of my chain, pretending I was asleep, and only too glad that they had something so important to think of, that they could leave me alone.

But one day before the Show opened, Miss Dorothy came to the stables with “Mr. Wyndham, sir,” and seeing me chained up and so miserable, she takes me in her arms.