aerated bakery-shop, and then there was the kennels, but they was
like nothing else in this world that ever I see. For the first days I
couldn't sleep of nights for fear someone would catch me lying in
such a cleaned-up place, and would chase me out of it, and when I did
fall to sleep I'd dream I was back in the old Master's attic,
shivering under the rusty stove, which never had no coals in it, with
the Master flat on his back on the cold floor with his clothes on.
And I'd wake up, scared and whimpering, and find myself on the new
Master's cot with his hand on the quilt beside me; and I'd see the
glow of the big stove, and hear the high-quality horses below-stairs
stamping in their straw-lined boxes, and I'd snoop the sweet smell of
hay and harness-soap, and go to sleep again.

The stables was my jail, so the Master said, but I don't ask no
better home than that jail.

"Now, Kid," says he, sitting on the top of a bucket upside down,
"you've got to understand this. When I whistle it means you're not to
go out of this 'ere yard. These stables is your jail. And if you
leave 'em I'll have to leave 'em, too, and over the seas, in the
County Mayo, an old mother will 'ave to leave her bit of a cottage.
For two pounds I must be sending her every month, or she'll have
naught to eat, nor no thatch over 'er head; so, I can't lose my
place, Kid, an' see you don't lose it for me. You must keep away from
the kennels," says he; "they're not for the likes of you. The kennels
are for the quality. I wouldn't take a litter of them woolly dogs for
one wag of your tail, Kid, but for all that they are your betters,
same as the gentry up in the big house are my betters. I know my
place and keep away from the gentry, and you keep away from the
Champions."