You must keep away from
the kennels," says he; "they're not for the likes of you. The kennels
are for the quality. I wouldn't take a litter of them woolly dogs for
one wag of your tail, Kid, but for all that they are your betters,
same as the gentry up in the big house are my betters. I know my
place and keep away from the gentry, and you keep away from the
Champions."
So I never goes out of the stables. All day I just lay in the sun on
the stone flags, licking my jaws, and watching the grooms wash down
the carriages, and the only care I had was to see they didn't get gay
and turn the hose on me. There wasn't even a single rat to plague me.
Such stables I never did see.
"Nolan," says the head-groom, "some day that dog of yours will give
you the slip. You can't keep a street-dog tied up all his life. It's
against his natur'." The head-groom is a nice old gentleman, but he
doesn't know everything. Just as though I'd been a street-dog because
I liked it. As if I'd rather poke for my vittles in ash-heaps than
have 'em handed me in a wash-basin, and would sooner bite and fight
than be polite and sociable. If I'd had mother there I couldn't have
asked for nothing more.
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