t and
Ringleader, and for gentle grandams, Miss Purdue and Jane. Her mother,
Barwell Queenie, came of the great lineage of Southport Perfection and
numbered among her ancestors a Beauty, a Princess and a Barwell Bess.

Those ten puppies, poor innocents, had something to live up to.

But their sire, Ralph, cared nothing for his distinguished progenitors,
not even for that prize grandmother who had sold for eight hundred
pounds, in comparison with the Lady of Cedar Hill, whom he frankly
adored. His most blissful moments were those in which he was allowed to
sit up on the lounge beside her, his paw in her palm, his head on her
shoulder, his brown eyes rolling up to her face with a look of liquid
ecstasy. He had been the guardian of Cedar Hill several years when Dora
arrived. Shipped from those same Surrey kennels in which Ralph uttered
his first squeal, her long journey over sea and land had been a
fearsome experience. When the expressman dumped a travelworn box,
labeled _Live Dog_, in the generous country house hall, and proceeded
with some nervousness to knock off the slats, the assembled household
grouped themselves behind the most reassuring pieces of furniture for
protection against the outrush of a ferocious beast. But the delicate
little collie that shot forth was herself in such terror that even the
waiting dish of warm milk and bread, into which she splashed at once,
could not allay her panic. From room to room she raced, hiding under
sofas and behind screens, finding nothing that gave her peace, not even
when she came up against a long mirror and fronted her own reflection,
another scared little collie, which she tried to kiss with a puzzled
tongue against the glass. Then in sauntered the lordly Ralph, whose
indignant growl at the intruder died in his astonished throat as Dora
confidingly flung herself upon him, leaping up and clinging to his
well-groomed neck with grimy forelegs quivering for joy. Ralph was a
dog who prided himself on his respectability. Affronted, shocked, he
shook off this impudent young hussy, but homesick little Dora would not
be repelled. Here, at last, was something she recognized, something
that belonged to her lost world of the kennels. Let Ralph be as surly
as he might, he had her perfect confidence from the outset, while the
winsome Lady of Cedar Hill had to coax for days before Dora would make
the first timid response to these strange overtures of human
friendship.

As for Ralph, h