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Page 34
As for Jan, it would not be easy nor yet quite fair to analyze his
feelings toward the wall-eyed sheep-dog. Jan's mind, like his big frame,
was not yet half developed. It may be that he could never be quite so
fine a gentleman as his sire; and in any case it were foolish to look
for old heads on puppy shoulders. He did not think at all when he saw
Grip. But in that instant he tugged at his collar, without conscious
volition, just as his hackles rose, just as sharp consciousness
penetrated every part of him, of the wounds he had sustained under
Grip's punishing jaws. It was not malice, but a sudden heady rush in his
veins of the lust of combat, that kept his thick coat so erectly
bristling, the soft skin about his nostrils wrinkling so actively, for
several minutes after his recognition of the sheep-dog. Unlike Grip, it
might be that Jan would, as he developed, learn easily to forgive; but
it was already tolerably obvious that he was not of the stuff of which
those dogs who forget are made.
"They don't forget the affair in the lane, either of them," said the
Master, with a smile, after the wagonette had started. It may be Jan
understood the words had reference to his first fight. In any case, he
looked eagerly up into the Master's face, and from that to Betty's; and
in that moment he was living over again through the strenuous rounds of
his struggle with Grip.
"Silly old Jan," said Betty, as her hand smoothed his head
affectionately.
"Truculent infant," laughed the Master. "Take note of the easy
sedateness of your father in the road there." (The round trot of the
Nuthill horses--and they frequently did the trip to the station in
twenty-five minutes--was no more than a comfortable amble for Finn.)
"Jan," said Betty Murdoch to her favorite, as they walked together on
the Downs some three or four hours later; "he's gone away to
Sas-sas-katchewan; and--he never said a word, Jan! I wonder if he
thought--what he thought."
If Jan had been human, he might so far have failed, as a companion, as
to have reminded Betty that, in fact, Dick had said a good many words
before starting for "Sas-sas-katchewan." Being only a dog, Jan failed
not at all in the sympathy he exchanged for Betty's confidence. He just
gently nuzzled her hand, thrusting his nose well up to her coat-cuff,
and showed her the loving devotion in his dark hazel eyes.
XVII
JAN BEFORE THE JUDGES
Eighteen months went by before Dick Vaughan returned to England; and
this period was one of happy and largely uneventful development for Jan,
the son of Finn and Desdemona. (It brought high honors to the Lady
Desdemona, by the way, both as a champion bloodhound and as the dam of
some fame-winning youngsters.) It brought no very marked signs of
advancing age to Finn, for the life the wolfhound led, while admittedly
devoid of any kind of hardship, was sufficiently active in a moderate
way, and very healthy. Jan made no history during this time, beyond the
smooth record of happy days and healthy growth.
"Just for the fun of the thing," he was entered in the "variety" class
at the Brighton dog-show, when twenty months old, and that was certainly
a memorable experience for him. There were bloodhound men at the show
who vowed he would have won a card in their section; and there were
wolfhound breeders who said the same thing of Jan with reference to
their particular division. Be that as it may, Finn's son won general
admiration when led out into the judging ring with the other entrants of
the "variety" class.
The judge was a specially great authority on bulldogs and terriers; but
it was admitted that there was no better or fairer all-round dog judge
in the show, and his experience in the past at hound field trials and
such like events proved him qualified to judge of such an animal as Jan.
Still, his special association with bulldogs and terriers was regarded
as something of a handicap by the exhibitors of other kinds of dogs in
this class, which, as it happened, was an unusually full one.
As Jan had never before been shown and was quite unaccustomed to being
at close quarters with numbers of strange dogs, Betty asked the Master
to take him into the ring for her. (Jan weighed one hundred and
forty-eight pounds now, and a pretty strong arm was required for his
restraint among strangers, the more so as he was quite unaccustomed to
being led.) So Betty and the Mistress secured stools for themselves
outside the ring and the Master led in Jan to a place among no fewer
than twenty-seven other competitors, ranging all the way from a queer
little hairless terrier from Brazil, to a huge, badly cow-hocked animal,
of perhaps two hundred pounds in weight, said to combine St. Bernard and
mastiff blood in his veins.
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