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“That will do,” I said, for I understood then without his telling me, and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.

But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very minute, and tell her that I didn’t care.

Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there’s no royal blood in mother’s veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor–and that’s the worst–she’s not even like me. For while I, when I’m washed for a fight, am as white as clean snow, she–and this is our trouble, she– my mother, is a black-and-tan.

When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to take care of myself, and, as after mother left me, the wharves were never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home. But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat; so I didn’t take to ’em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a street-fight by the hind-legs, and kicked me good.

“You want to fight, do you?” says he. “I’ll give you all the FIGHTING you want!” he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he was my Master, and I followed him home. Since that day I’ve pulled off many fights for him, and they’ve brought dogs from all over the province to have a go at me, but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had ever downed me.

But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog was over-weight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn’t do it. Not that I mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was, though not, as you might say, his habit, he was most kind to me, and let me out to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn’t pick him up at night and lead him home.

But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it’s weakening to his insides, and it causes the legs to wabble.

The ring was in a hall, back of a public-house. There was a red-hot whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the Master’s lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering awful; but I always shiver before a fight; I can’t help gettin’ excited. While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.

“You poor little pup,” says he. “You haven’t no show,” he says. “That brute in the tap-room, he’ll eat your heart out.”

“That’s what you think,” says the Master, snarling. “I’ll lay you a quid the Kid chews him up.”

The groom, he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like, that I begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn’t bear to leave off a-patting of me, and he says, speaking low just like he would to a man-folk, “Well, good-luck to you, little pup,” which I thought so civil of him, that I reached up and licked his hand. I don’t do that to many men. And the Master, he knew I didn’t, and took on dreadful.

“What ‘ave you got on the back of your hand?” says he, jumping up.

“Soap!” says the groom, quick as a rat. “That’s more than you’ve got on yours. Do you want to smell of it?” and he sticks his fist under the Master’s nose. But the pals pushed in between ’em.