But if Prince the puppy was father to Prince the dog, so Jack the boy was father to Jack the man. A certain jolly self-indulgence and ignoring of consequences, so long as they could be shelved, were from first to last marked features in his character. When Jack, with his captive, reached the small, swarming, reeking family-room, in which there was always a washing going on, at some stage of the process, his mother did say that they had already as many dogs as there was bran for. And his father, coming in from his last odd job, told the boy to get along, and asked him reproachfully if his father’s dog, Bully, a lame, cantankerous old bull-terrier of dubious origin, and his mother’s birds—canaries and goldfinches, which were her “fad”—were not, together with his numerous little brothers and sisters, pets enough for him?
But Jack was his father and mother’s own boy, and, as it was rather a prosperous time with them, they could not find it in their hearts to baulk him in an inclination with which they had really so much sympathy. So Prince was suffered to become a member of the happy-go-lucky family. The only serious opposition he met with came from his dog-brother, Bully, who assumed a hostile attitude of tooth and claw. However, Bully was old and incapable, so that a tolerably active young dog could manage to escape from the execution of his menaces. Besides, a street accident soon afterwards disposed of the canine patriarch, to the unaffected grief of his master.
Prince grew to dog’s estate in the household, sharing its very fluctuating, but inevitably downward-tending, fortunes, scrambling with it for a livelihood—feasting the one day, fasting the next—receiving a cuff, or a spendthrift dole, as humour and the family purse inclined.
Prince acquired stores of knowledge and experience of a mixed sort at this stage of his existence. He was accustomed to go everywhere with Jack in his spare time—above all, on his half-holidays. Prince enlarged his acquaintance with London; he was not only a regular attendant on all the bird sales and rat-pits in the neighbourhood, but travelled into the suburbs and to the verge of the country. He followed Punch and Judys, and joined in the festivities of Guy Fawkes’ and chimney-sweeps’ days. He went a-palming on the Saturday before Palm Sunday; he was on Hampstead Heath, in Greenwich Park, and Epping Forest, and saw the coloured paper-streamers, and the brilliant crimson and green false beards on successive Easter and Whit Mondays. The wide open spaces, the green grass, the shady trees puzzled him a good deal, but not nearly so much as did the sea, which he once saw in a cheap trip to Brighton, when Jack’s family were in exceptional funds, and spending them like princes.
Prince was never absent from the Boat Race. Year after year, as the day came round, he was to be found stationed by Jack’s side on the Hammersmith Bridge, not half so much incommoded, on account of the pressure—which, indeed, he could keep off by the use of natural weapons—as he had been startled by the wide world of waters, on the edge of which he had stood, with his tail uncertain whether to droop or to curl, at Brighton.
I question whether any dog belonging to the two universities took a greater interest in the race, even though he had been rowed for hours by his attentive master on the Isis or the Cam, than did Prince, in all impartiality; for, though he had a rag of ribbon tied duly round his neck by Jack, Prince at least had no bet either on the light or the dark blue. No more had he any, save the simplest friendly interest, in the winner of the Derby, when he accompanied Jack in an overflowing costermonger’s cart to Epsom Downs. His temper was sorely tried on the way, not merely by the traffic and the clouds of dust, but by the flour warfare, which powdered him white like a miller’s dog. As Prince could not wear a veil, his small eyes were filled till he could hardly blink at the flying hedges, or, after his arrival, at the grand stand, the starting-point, the negro serenaders, and the gipsy fortune-tellers.
On the whole, Prince had a tolerably happy youth, for a dog of his condition, under Jack’s auspices. It might not have been so improving as one could wish, but he learnt some proficiency in shifting for himself, and being philosophical when nothing better offered—a valuable lesson for more than dogs.
Everything comes to an end, and few things sooner, alas! than the hand-to-mouth drifting with the tide of careless, improvident working people. There came a time, at no distant date in Jack’s and Prince’s household, in which there were no longer treats and dainties going. Bacon, buttered toast, and saveloys vanished from the board. Meals became intermittent. Bit after bit of furniture, and every scrap of clothing that could be spared, were put in pawn at one of the shops with the three golden balls above the doorway. The mother of the family was laid down with typhus, and removed to the nearest hospital. Young Gussy and Fred shared the same fate.
Poor Jack, hanging his head, began to speak of parting with Prince. He had often wished he could put him in pawn with the rest of the pledged goods, and borrow a little money on Prince’s capabilities of keeping guard and ratting. Jack had joked in his half-rueful, half-rough fashion on the dogs not eating his head off, since he could hardly tell on what Prince, together with his master’s family, had fed for the last fortnight. Jack knew very well how he and Prince had gone out, in company and separately, after nightfall and in broad day, on the hunt; how they had constituted themselves amateur chiffonniers, and burrowed in the dust heaps for cast-away fragments; how they had hung about the doors of eating-houses and bakers shops for chance crumbs; how they had picked up garbage and been thankful.
But it was one thing to joke and another to dispose, for good and all, of the old dog—he was an old dog now in Jack’s eyes—and that to a customer who was hard-fisted and cross-grained, whose bite and sup Prince would not share, and who could no more be trusted to let old friends meet than he could be expected to redeem the forfeited articles and restore the fallen fortunes of the family gone to the wall.