princess in the ways of the wild; but he could see that she looked fit
as a fiddle and was obviously very much enjoying her life. And so he
turned a deaf ear to his kennelman, even when the good fellow said,
protestingly:

"You don't see such a bitch once in twenty years, sir. She's just on her
eighteenth month and she's worth taking care of."

"She certainly is, Bates," replied the Colonel, "and you must keep a
sharp lookout. Look to her each day. But, upon my word, I think she's
also worth giving a good time to. Give her her head, and I don't think
she will ever disappoint us. Thank goodness, there are no traps or
poison about here, or none that I ever heard of."

"No, it's not that, sir," persisted the kennelman; "but Desdemona she's
good enough to win in the best company, and to mother winners, too. And
you know, sir, if a dog's to do hisself justice on the bench, you can't
let him go skirmishing around the country like a gipsy's lurcher. It
sorter roughs 'em somehow. The judges don't like it, and the Fancy
don't, neither, sir. Look at the chalk an' that on her coat this
morning, sir."

"Ah well," said the Colonel, with a little laugh, "we never have bred
for the judges, Bates; nor yet for the Fancy, either; and if they can't
recognize the merits of a bitch like that because she's been living a
natural, happy sort of life, instead of a cage-life--why, then, that's
their loss, not ours, and we must chance it."

And so the kennelman shrugged his shoulders and the Lady Desdemona
continued to enjoy life, the new and wider life to which she was being