the ring, and plants me on the platform next my father.
I trembled so that I near fell. My legs twisted like a leash. But my
father he never looked at me. He only smiled the same sleepy smile, and
he still kept his eyes half shut, like as no one, no, not even his own
son, was worth his lookin' at.
The judge he didn't let me stay beside my father, but, one by one, he
placed the other dogs next to him and measured and felt and pulled at
them. And each one he put down, but he never put my father down. And
then he comes over and picks up me and sets me back on the platform,
shoulder to shoulder with the Champion Regent Royal, and goes down on
his knees, and looks into our eyes.
The gentleman with my father he laughs, and says to the judge, "Thinking
of keeping us here all day, John?" But the judge he doesn't hear him,
and goes behind us and runs his hand down my side, and holds back my
ears, and takes my jaws between his fingers. The crowd around the ring
is very deep now, and nobody says nothing. The gentleman at the
score-table, he is leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees and his
eyes very wide, and the gentleman at the gate is whispering quick to
Miss Dorothy, who has turned white. I stood as stiff as stone. I didn't
even breathe. But out of the corner of my eye I could see my father
licking his pink chops, and yawning just a little, like he was bored.
The judge he had stopped looking fierce and was looking solemn.
Something inside him seemed a-troubling him awful. The more he stares at
us now, the more solemn he gets, and when he touches us he does it
gentle, like he was patting us. For a long time he kneels in the
sawdust, looking at my father and at me, and no one around the ring says
nothing to nobody.
Then the judge takes a breath and touches me sudden. "It's his," he
says. But he lays his hand just as quick on my father. "I'm sorry," says
he.
The gentleman holding my father cries:
"Do you mean to tell me--"
And the judge he answers, "I mean the other is the better dog." He takes
my father's head between his hands and looks down at him most sorrowful.
"The king is dead," says he. "Long live the king! Good-by, Regent," he
says.
The crowd around the railings clapped their hands, and some laughed
scornful, and every one talks fast, and I start for the gate, so dizzy
that I can't see my way. But my father pushes in front of me, walking
very daintily, and smiling sleepy, same as he had just been waked, with
his head high and his eyes shut, looking at nobody.
[Illustration: For a long time he kneels in the sawdust.]
So that is how I "came by my inheritance," as Miss Dorothy calls it; and
just for that, though I couldn't feel where I was any different, the
crowd follows me to my bench, and pats me, and coos at me, like I was a
baby in a baby-carriage. And the handlers have to hold 'em back so that
the gentlemen from the papers can make pictures of me, and Nolan walks
me up and down so proud, and the men shake their heads and says, "He
certainly is the true type, he is!" And the pretty ladies ask Miss
Dorothy, who sits beside me letting me lick her gloves to show the crowd
what friends we is, "Aren't you afraid he'll bite you?" And Jimmy Jocks
calls to me, "Didn't I tell you so? I always knew you were one of us.
Blood will out, Kid; blood will out. I saw your grandfather," says he,
"make his debut at the Crystal Palace. But he was never the dog you
are!"
After that, if I could have asked for it, there was nothing I couldn't
get. You might have thought I was a snow-dog, and they was afeard I'd
melt. If I wet my pats, Nolan gave me a hot bath and chained me to the
stove; if I couldn't eat my food, being stuffed full by the cook--for I
am a house-dog now, and let in to lunch, whether there is visitors or
not,--Nolan would run to bring the vet. It was all tommy rot, as Jimmy
says, but meant most kind. I couldn't scratch myself comfortable,
without Nolan giving me nasty drinks, and rubbing me outside till it
burnt awful; and I wasn't let to eat bones for fear of spoiling my
"beautiful" mouth, what mother used to call my "punishing jaw"; and my
food was cooked special on a gas-stove; and Miss Dorothy gives me an
overcoat, cut very stylish like the champions', to wear when we goes out
carriage-driving.
After the next Show, where I takes three blue ribbons, four silver cups,
two medals, and brings home forty-five dollars for Nolan, they gives me
a "registered" name, same as Jimmy's. Miss Dorothy wanted to call me
"Regent Heir Apparent"; but I was _that_ glad when Nolan says, "No;
Kid don't owe nothing to his father, only to you and hisself. So, if you
please, miss, we'll call him Wyndham Kid." And so they did, and you can
see it on my overcoat in blue letters, and painted top of my kennel. It
was all too hard to understand. For days I just sat and wondered if I
was really me, and how it all come about, and why everybody was so kind.
But oh, it was so good they was, for if they hadn't been I'd never have
got the thing I most wished after. But, because they was kind, and not
liking to deny me nothing, they gave it me, and it was more to me than
anything in the world.
It came about one day when we was out driving. We was in the cart they
calls the dog-cart because it's the one Miss Dorothy keeps to take Jimmy
and me for an airing. Nolan was up behind, and me, in my new overcoat,
was sitting beside Miss Dorothy. I was admiring the view, and thinking
how good it was to have a horse pull you about so that you needn't get
yourself splashed and have to be washed, when I hears a dog calling loud
for help, and I pricks up my ears and looks over the horse's head. And I
sees something that makes me tremble down to my toes. In the road before
us three big dogs was chasing a little old lady-dog. She had a string to
her tail, where some boys had tied a can, and she was dirty with mud and
ashes, and torn most awful. She was too far done up to get away, and too
old to help herself, but she was making a fight for her life, snapping
her old gums savage, and dying game. All this I see in a wink, and then
the three dogs pinned her down, and I can't stand it no longer, and
clears the wheel and lands in the road on my head. It was my stylish
overcoat done that, and I cursed it proper, but I gets my pats again
quick, and makes a rush for the fighting. Behind me I hear Miss Dorothy
cry: "They'll kill that old dog. Wait, take my whip. Beat them off her!
The Kid can take care of himself"; and I hear Nolan fall into the road,
and the horse come to a stop. The old lady-dog was down, and the three
was eating her vicious; but as I come up, scattering the pebbles, she
hears, and thinking it's one more of them, she lifts her head, and my
heart breaks open like some one had sunk his teeth in it. For, under the
ashes and the dirt and the blood, I can see who it is, and I know that
my mother has come back to me.
I gives a yell that throws them three dogs off their legs.
"Mother!" I cries. "I'm the Kid," I cries. "I'm coming to you. Mother,
I'm coming!"
And I shoots over her at the throat of the big dog, and the other two
they sinks their teeth into that stylish overcoat and tears it off me,
and that sets me free, and I lets them have it. I never had so fine a
fight as that! What with mother being there to see, and not having been
let to mix up in no fights since I become a prize-winner, it just
naturally did me good, and it wasn't three shakes before I had 'em
yelping. Quick as a wink, mother she jumps in to help me, and I just
laughed to see her. It was so like old times. And Nolan he made me
laugh, too. He was like a hen on a bank, shaking the butt of his whip,
but not daring to cut in for fear of hitting me.
"Stop it, Kid," he says, "stop it. Do you want to be all torn up?" says
he. "Think of the Boston Show," says he. "Think of Chicago. Think of
Danbury. Don't you never want to be a champion?" How was I to think of
all them places when I had three dogs to cut up at the same time? But in
a minute two of 'em begs for mercy, and mother and me lets 'em run away.
The big one he ain't able to run away. Then mother and me we dances and
jumps, and barks and laughs, and bites each other and rolls each other
in the road. There never was two dogs so happy as we. And Nolan he
whistles and calls and begs me to come to him; but I just laugh and play
larks with mother.
"Now, you come with me," says I, "to my new home, and never try to run
away again." And I shows her our house with the five red roofs, set on
the top of the hill. But mother trembles awful, and says: "They'd never
let me in such a place. Does the Viceroy live there, Kid?" says she. And
I laugh at her. "No; I do," I says. "And if they won't let you live
there, too, you and me will go back to the streets together, for we must
never be parted no more." So we trots up the hill side by side, with
Nolan trying to catch me, and Miss Dorothy laughing at him from the
cart.
"The Kid's made friends with the poor old dog," says she. "Maybe he knew
her long ago when he ran the streets himself. Put her in here beside me,
and see if he doesn't follow."
So when I hears that I tells mother to go with Nolan and sit in the
cart; but she says no--that she'd soil the pretty lady's frock; but I
tells her to do as I say, and so Nolan lifts her, trembling still, into
the cart, and I runs alongside, barking joyful.
When we drives into the stables I takes mother to my kennel, and tells
her to go inside it and make herself at home. "Oh, but he won't let me!"
says she.
"Who won't let you?" says I, keeping my eye on Nolan, and growling a bit
nasty, just to show I was meaning to have my way.
"Why, Wyndham Kid," says she, looking up at the name on my kennel.
"But I'm Wyndham Kid!" says I.
"You!" cries mother. "You! Is my little Kid the great Wyndham Kid the
dogs all talk about?" And at that, she being very old, and sick, and
nervous, as mothers are, just drops down in the straw and weeps bitter.
Well, there ain't much more than that to tell. Miss Dorothy she settled
it.
"If the Kid wants the poor old thing in the stables," says she, "let her
stay."
"You see," says she, "she's a black-and-tan, and his mother was a
black-and-tan, and maybe that's what makes Kid feel so friendly toward
her," says she.
"Indeed, for me," says Nolan, "she can have the best there is. I'd never
drive out no dog that asks for a crust nor a shelter," he says. "But
what will Mr. Wyndham do?"
"He'll do what I say," says Miss Dorothy, "and if I say she's to stay,
she will stay, and I say--she's to stay!"
And so mother and Nolan and me found a home. Mother was scared at
first--not being used to kind people; but she was so gentle and loving
that the grooms got fonder of her than of me, and tried to make me
jealous by patting of her and giving her the pick of the vittles. But
that was the wrong way to hurt my feelings. That's all, I think. Mother
is so happy here that I tell her we ought to call it the Happy Hunting
Grounds, because no one hunts you, and there is nothing to hunt; it just
all comes to you. And so we live in peace, mother sleeping all day in
the sun, or behind the stove in the head groom's office, being fed twice
a day regular by Nolan, and all the day by the other grooms most
irregular. And as for me, I go hurrying around the country to the
bench-shows, winning money and cups for Nolan, and taking the blue
ribbons away from father.