But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog was overweight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn’t do it. Not that I mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was–though not, as you might say, his habit–he was most kind to me, and let me out to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn’t pick him up at night and lead him home.
But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it’s weakening to his insides, and it causes the legs to wobble.
The ring was in a hall back of a public house. There was a red-hot whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the Master’s lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering awful; but I always shiver before a fight: I can’t help gettin’ excited. While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.
“You poor little pup,” says he; “you haven’t no show,” he says. “That brute in the tap-room he’ll eat your heart out.”
“That’s what you think,” says the Master, snarling. “I’ll lay you a quid the Kid chews him up.”
The groom he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like that I begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn’t bear to leave off a-patting of me, and he says, speaking low just like he would to a man-folk, “Well, good luck to you, little pup,” which I thought so civil of him that I reached up and licked his hand. I don’t do that to many men. And the Master he knew I didn’t, and took on dreadful.
“What ’ave you got on the back of your hand?” says he, jumping up.
“Soap!” says the groom, quick as a rat. “That’s more than you’ve got on yours. Do you want to smell of it?” and he sticks his fist under the Master’s nose. But the pals pushed in between ’em.
“He tried to poison the Kid!” shouts the Master.
“Oh, one fight at a time,” says the referee. “Get into the ring, Jerry. We’re waiting.” So we went into the ring.