“Good Lord! how will that help him? It reminds one of a story in the ‘Arabian Nights,’ where somebody with a crack-jaw name gives to somebody else—a porter, I think it was—a lump of lead, promising it will make his fortune. But he wisely declined to specify by what particular method the charm would work. I think the man weighted a fish-line with it, and caught a salmon with a diamond in its mouth. But you can hardly expect your scheme to work like that.” “Wait and see, Ronald. I read in a German story book the other day how a dog had turned a man into an early riser (I shall give you one, Ronald), and made him charitable, and religious, and all the rest of it. Surely I can trust my dog to reclaim a man from one single failing.” “I should like to see how he’s going to do it,” said Ronald incredulously. “The chances are your _protégé_ will take his dog the first day to the nearest public-house. And, if he gets biscuits there, as a nice dog is sure to do, he’ll want no coaxing to take his master there every day. And the last state of that man will be worse than the first.” “I am afraid there is no worse possible in this case. At any rate I have faith in my dog.” The next day a ragged little hound, called “Judy,” was selected from the kennels at Thorpe Hill, and despatched to the _protégé_ in question. Pure white she was, and so small, that, at a shift, you could hold her in the hollow of your hand. A veritable little mongrel, of course, if ever there was one. Indeed, nothing but a mongrel would have had the capacity for so delicate a mission. For, as we all know, it is to the mongrel that we look for intelligence and originality. The consciousness of inherited merit is fatal to intellectual progress in an animal of pedigree. Partiality—but only the most prejudiced—might have called Judy a rough Irish terrier. Only her ears didn’t lop, but were carried erect like a donkey’s, and her legs were too long, and her tail had an ugly “kinck” in it. Having abused her sufficiently for her personal appearance, let me add that she had the sweetest and most winning of faces—chiefly composed of eyes, which were so large in comparison with the rest of her features that they seemed to swallow them up, giving to the face, as a whole, the thin, troubled look of premature age, which is so pathetic in any sick animal. But Judy was far from being delicate, and enjoyed to the full the zest and sparkle of life. With her head on one side, and her ears pricked up, and attention bestowed on the curl of her tail, a matter in which she was often negligent, she would have matched the best of them as a study of arrested life.