endly as hers.

Her "pedigree name" was Rothsay Lass. She was a collie--daintily
fragile of build, sensitive of nostril, furrily tawny of coat. Her
ancestry was as flawless as any in Burke's Peerage.

If God had sent her into the world with a pair of tulip ears and with a
shade less width of brain-space she might have been cherished and
coddled as a potential bench-show winner, and in time might even have
won immortality by the title of "CHAMPION Rothsay Lass."

But her ears pricked rebelliously upward, like those of her earliest
ancestors, the wolves. Nor could manipulation lure their stiff
cartilages into drooping as bench-show fashion demands. The average
show-collie's ears have a tendency to prick. By weights and plasters,
and often by torture, this tendency is overcome. But never when the
cartilage is as unyielding as was Lass's.

Her graceful head harked back in shape to the days when collies had to
do much independent thinking, as sheep-guards, and when they needed
more brainroom than is afforded by the borzoi skull sought after by
modern bench-show experts.

Wherefore, Lass had no hope whatever of winning laurels in the
show-ring or of attracting a high price from some rich fancier. She was
tabulated, from babyhood, as a "second"--in other words, as a faulty
specimen in a litter that should have been faultless.

These "seconds" are as good to look at, from a layman's view, as is any
international champion. And their offspring are sometimes as perfect as
are those of the finest specimens. But, lacking the arbitrary "points"
demanded by show-judges, the "seconds" are condemned to obscurity, and
to sell as pets.

If Lass had been a male dog, her beauty and sense and lovableness would
have found a ready purchaser for her. For nine pet collies out of ten
are "seconds"; and splendid pets they make for the most part.

But Lass, at the very start, had committed the unforgivable sin of
being born a female. Therefore, no pet-seeker wanted to buy her. Even
when she was offered for sale at half the sum asked for her less
handsome brothers, no one wanted her.

A mare--or the female of nearly any species except the canine--brings
as high and as ready a price as does the male. But never the female
dog. Except for breeding, she is not wanted.

This prejudice had its start in Crusader days, some thousand years ago.
Up to that time, all through the civilized world, a female dog had been
more popular as a pet than a ma