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.
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