"Presented, by the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City—18-KARAT GOLD SPECIALTY CUP, FOR COLLIES (conditions announced later)."
"A gold cup!" sighed the Mistress, yielding to Delusions of Grandeur, "A gold cup! I never heard of such a thing, at a dog show. And—and won't it look perfectly gorgeous in the very center of our Trophy Shelf, there—with the other cups radiating from it on each side? And——"
"Hold on!" laughed the Master, trying to mask his own thrill, man-fashion, by wetblanketing his wife's enthusiasm. "Hold on! We haven't got it, yet. I'll enter Lad for it, of course. But so will every other collie-owner who reads that. Besides, even if Lad should win it, we'd have to buy a microscope to see the thing. It will probably be about half the size of a thimble. Gold cups cost gold money, you know. And I don't suppose this 'Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City' is squandering more than ten or fifteen dollars at most on a country dog show. Even for the Red Cross. I suppose he's some Wall Street chum that Glure has wheedled into giving a Specialty. He's a novelty to me. I never heard of him before. Did you?"
"No," admitted the Mistress. "But I feel I'm beginning to love him. Oh, Laddie," she confided to the dog, "I'm going to give you a bath in naphtha soap every day till then; and brush you, two hours every morning; and feed you on liver and——"
"'Conditions announced later,'" quoted the Master, studying the big-type offer once more. "I wonder what that means. Of course, in a Specialty Show, anything goes. But——"
"I don't care what the conditions are," interrupted the Mistress, refusing to be disheartened. "Lad can come up to them. Why, there isn't a greater dog in America than Lad. And you know it."
"I know it," assented the pessimistic Master. "But will the Judge? You might tell him so."
"Lad will tell him," promised the Mistress. "Don't worry."
On Labor Day morning a thousand cars, from a radius of fifty miles, were converging upon the much-advertised village of Hampton; whence, by climbing a tortuous first-speed hill, they presently chugged into the still-more-advertised estate of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Wall Street Farmer.