"Just for the fun of the thing," he was entered in the "variety" class
at the Brighton dog-show, when twenty months old, and that was certainly
a memorable experience for him. There were bloodhound men at the show
who vowed he would have won a card in their section; and there were
wolfhound breeders who said the same thing of Jan with reference to
their particular division. Be that as it may, Finn's son won general
admiration when led out into the judging ring with the other entrants of
the "variety" class.

The judge was a specially great authority on bulldogs and terriers; but
it was admitted that there was no better or fairer all-round dog judge
in the show, and his experience in the past at hound field trials and
such like events proved him qualified to judge of such an animal as Jan.
Still, his special association with bulldogs and terriers was regarded
as something of a handicap by the exhibitors of other kinds of dogs in
this class, which, as it happened, was an unusually full one.

As Jan had never before been shown and was quite unaccustomed to being
at close quarters with numbers of strange dogs, Betty asked the Master
to take him into the ring for her. (Jan weighed one hundred and
forty-eight pounds now, and a pretty strong arm was required for his
restraint among strangers, the more so as he was quite unaccustomed to
being led.) So Betty and the Mistress secured stools for themselves
outside the ring and the Master led in Jan to a place among no fewer
than twenty-seven other competitors, ranging all the way from a queer
little hairless terrier from Brazil, to a huge, badly cow-hocked animal,
of perhaps two hundred pounds in weight, said to combine St. Bernard and
mastiff blood in his veins.