Thus encouraged, the Master filled in the blank and sent it with a check. And in due time word was returned to him that "Sunnybank Lad" was formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminster Kennel Club's annual show at Madison Square Garden. By this time both the Mistress and the Master were infected with the most virulent type of the Show Germ. They talked of little else than the forthcoming Event. They read all the dog-show literature they could lay hands on. As for Lad, he was mercifully ignorant of what was in store for him. The Mistress had an inkling of his fated ordeal when she read the Kennel Club rule that no dog could be taken from the Garden, except at stated times, from the moment the show should begin, at ten A.M. Wednesday morning, until the hour of its close, at ten o'clock Saturday night. For twelve hours a day--for four consecutive days--every entrant must be there. By paying a forfeit fee, dog owners might take their pets to some nearby hotel or stable, for the remainder of the night and early morning--a permission which, for obvious reasons, would not affect most dogs. "But Lad's never been away from home a night in his life!" exclaimed the Mistress in dismay. "He'll be horribly lonely there, all that while--especially at night." By this time, with the mysterious foreknowledge of the best type of thoroughbred collie, Lad began to be aware that something unusual had crept into the atmosphere of The Place. It made him restless, but he did not associate it with himself--until the Mistress took to giving him daily baths and brushings. Always she had brushed him once a day, to keep his shaggy coat fluffy and burnished; and the lake had supplied him with baths that made him as clean as any human. But never had he undergone such searching massage with comb and brush as was now his portion. Never had he known such soap-infested scrubbings as were now his daily fate, for the week preceding the show. As a result of these ministrations his wavy fur was like spun silk in texture; and it stood out all over him like the hair of a Circassian beauty in a dime museum. The white chest and forepaws were like snow. And his sides and broad back and mighty shoulders shone like dark bronze. He was magnificent--but he was miserable. He knew well enough, now, that he was in some way the center of all this unwonted stir and excitement which pervaded The Place. He loathed change of any sort--a thoroughbred collie being ever an ultra-conservative. This particular change seemed to threaten his peace; also it kept his skin scraped with combs and his hair redolent of nasty-smelling soaps. To humans there was no odor at all in the naphtha soap with which the Mistress lathered the dog, and every visible atom of it was washed away at once with warm water. But a human's sense of smell, compared with the best type of collie's, is as a purblind puppy's power of sight in comparison to a hawk's.