.

The crowd around the railings clapped their hands, and some laughed
scornful, and every one talks fast, and I start for the gate, so dizzy
that I can't see my way. But my father pushes in front of me, walking
very daintily, and smiling sleepy, same as he had just been waked, with
his head high and his eyes shut, looking at nobody.

[Illustration: For a long time he kneels in the sawdust.]

So that is how I "came by my inheritance," as Miss Dorothy calls it; and
just for that, though I couldn't feel where I was any different, the
crowd follows me to my bench, and pats me, and coos at me, like I was a
baby in a baby-carriage. And the handlers have to hold 'em back so that
the gentlemen from the papers can make pictures of me, and Nolan walks
me up and down so proud, and the men shake their heads and says, "He
certainly is the true type, he is!" And the pretty ladies ask Miss
Dorothy, who sits beside me letting me lick her gloves to show the crowd
what friends we is, "Aren't you afraid he'll bite you?" And Jimmy Jocks
calls to me, "Didn't I tell you so? I always knew you were one of us.
Blood will out, Kid; blood will out. I saw your grandfather," says he,
"make his debut at the Crystal Palace. But he was never the dog you
are!"

After that, if I could have asked for it, there was nothing I couldn't
get. You might have thought I was a snow-dog, and they was afeard I'd
melt. If I wet my pats, Nolan gave me a hot bath and chained me to the
stove; if I couldn't eat my food, being stuffed full by the cook--for I
am a house-dog now, and let in to lunch, whether there is visitors or
not,--Nolan would run to bring the vet. It was all tommy rot, as Jimmy
says, but meant most kind. I couldn't scratch myself comfortable,
without Nolan giving me nasty drinks, and rubbing me outside till it
burnt awful; and I wasn't let to eat bones for fear of spoiling my
"beautiful" mouth, what mother used to call my "punishing jaw"; and my
food was cooked special on a gas-stove; and Miss Dorothy gives me an
overcoat, cut very stylish like the champions', to wear when we goes out
carriage-driving.

After the next Show, where I takes three blue ribbons, four silver cups,
two medals, and brings home forty-five dollars for Nolan, they gives me
a "registered" name, same as Jimmy's. Miss Dorothy wanted to call me
"Regent Heir Apparent"; but I was _that_ glad when Nolan says, "No;
Kid don't owe nothing to his father, only to you and hisself. So, i