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.

"You poor little tyke," says she. "It's cruel to tie him up so; he's