A guest started all the trouble—a guest who spent a week-end at The Place and who loved dogs far better than he understood them. He made much of Lad, being loud-voiced in his admiration of the stately collie. Lad endured the caresses when he could not politely elude them.
"Say!" announced the guest just before he departed, "If I had a dog like Lad, I'd 'show' him—at the big show at Madison Square, you know. It's booked for next month. Why not take a chance and exhibit him there? Think what it would mean to you people to have a Westminster blue ribbon the big dog had won! Why, you'd be as proud as Punch!"
It was a careless speech and well meant. No harm might have come from it, had not the Master the next day chanced upon an advance notice of the dog-show in his morning paper. He read the press-agent's quarter-column proclamation. Then he remembered what the guest had said. The Mistress was called into consultation. And it was she, as ever, who cast the deciding vote.
"Lad is twice as beautiful as any collie we ever saw at the Show," she declared, "and not one of them is half as wise or good or human as he is. And—a blue ribbon is the greatest honor a dog can have, I suppose. It would be something to remember."
After which, the Master wrote a letter to a friend who kept a show kennel of Airedales. He received this answer:
"I don't pretend to know anything, professionally, about collies—Airedales being my specialty. But Lad is a beauty, as I remember him, and his pedigree shows a bunch of old-time champions. I'd risk it, if I were you. If you are in doubt and don't want to plunge, why not just enter him for the Novice class? That is a class for dogs that have never before been shown. It will cost you five dollars to enter him for a single class, like that. And in the Novice, he won't be up against any champions or other dogs that have already won prizes. That will make it easier. It isn't a grueling competition like the 'Open' or even the 'Limit.' If he wins as a Novice, you can enter him, another time, in something more important. I'm inclosing an application-blank for you to fill out and send with your entrance-fee, to the secretary. You'll find his address at the bottom of the blank. I'm showing four of my Airedales there—so we'll be neighbors."
Thus encouraged, the Master filled in the blank and sent it with a check. And in due time word was returned to him that "Sunnybank Lad" was formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminster Kennel Club's annual show at Madison Square Garden.
By this time both the Mistress and the Master were infected with the most virulent type of the Show Germ. They talked of little else than the forthcoming Event. They read all the dog-show literature they could lay hands on.
As for Lad, he was mercifully ignorant of what was in store for him.