Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn’t go abroad with me by day. It was the same old scandal that they’re always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I didn’t know. I couldn’t see any difference between mother–and other mothers.
But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names at her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had whipped us. After that she wouldn’t go out with me except in the dark, and one day she went away and never came back, and, though I hunted for her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal, I never found her.
One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old blind mastiff, whose Master is the night watchman on our slip, what it all meant. And he told me.
“Every dog in Montreal knows,” he says, “except you; and every Master knows. So I think it’s time you knew.”
Then he tells me that my father, who had treated mother so bad, was a great and noble gentleman from London. “Your father had twenty-two registered ancestors, had your father,” old Guardian says, “and in him was the best bull-terrier blood of England, the most ancientest, the most royal; the winning ‘blue-ribbon’ blood, that breeds champions. He had sleepy pink eyes and thin pink lips, and he was as white all over as his own white teeth, and under his white skin you could see his muscles, hard and smooth, like the links of a steel chain. When your father stood still, and tipped his nose in the air, it was just as though he was saying, ‘Oh, yes, you common dogs and men, you may well stare. It must be a rare treat for you colonials to see real English royalty.’ He certainly was pleased with hisself, was your father. He looked just as proud and haughty as one of them stone dogs in Victoria Park–them as is cut out of white marble. And you’re like him,” says the old mastiff–“by that, of course, meaning you’re white, same as him. That’s the only likeness. But, you see, the trouble is, Kid–well, you see, Kid, the trouble is–your mother—”
“That will do,” I said, for then I understood without his telling me, and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.
But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very minute, and tell her that I didn’t care.
Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there’s no royal blood in mother’s veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor–and that’s the worst–she’s not even like me. For while I, when I’m washed for a fight, am as white as clean snow, she–and this is our trouble–she, my mother, is a black-and-tan.
When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to take care of myself, and as, after mother left me, the wharves were never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home. But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat; so I didn’t take to ’em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a street-fight by the hind legs, and kicked me good.
“You want to fight, do you?” says he. “I’ll give you all the fighting you want!” he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he was my Master, and I followed him home. Since that day I’ve pulled off many fights for him, and they’ve brought dogs from all over the province to have a go at me; but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had ever downed me.