own dog was an old gentleman
bull-dog. He'd come along with us, and when he notices how taken aback I
was with all I see, 'e turned quite kind and affable and showed me
about.

"Jimmy Jocks," Miss Dorothy called him, but, owing to his weight, he
walked most dignified and slow, waddling like a duck, as you might say,
and looked much too proud and handsome for such a silly name.

"That's the runway, and that's the trophy-house," says he to me, "and
that over there is the hospital, where you have to go if you get
distemper, and the vet gives you beastly medicine."

"And which of these is your 'ouse, sir?" asks I, wishing to be
respectful. But he looked that hurt and haughty. "I don't live in the
kennels," says he, most contemptuous. "I am a house-dog. I sleep in Miss
Dorothy's room. And at lunch I'm let in with the family, if the visitors
don't mind. They 'most always do, but they're too polite to say so.
Besides," says he, smiling most condescending, "visitors are always
afraid of me. It's because I'm so ugly," says he. "I suppose," says he,
screwing up his wrinkles and speaking very slow and impressive, "I
suppose I'm the ugliest bull-dog in America"; and as he seemed to be so
pleased to think hisself so, I said, "Yes, sir; you certainly are the
ugliest ever I see," at which he nodded his head most approving.

"But I couldn't hurt 'em, as you say," he goes on, though I hadn't said
nothing like that, being too polite. "I'm too old," he says; "I haven't
any teeth. The last time one of those grizzly bears," said he, glaring
at the big St. Bernards, "took a hold of me, he nearly was my death,"
says he. I thought his eyes would pop out of his head, he seemed so
wrought up about it. "He rolled me around in the dirt, he did," says
Jimmy Jocks, "an' I couldn't get up. It was low," says Jimmy Jocks,
making a face like he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Low, that's what I
call it--bad form, you understand, young man, not done in my
set--and--and low." He growled 'way down in his stomach, and puffed
hisself out, panting and blowing like he had been on a run.

"I'm not a street fighter," he says, scowling at a St. Bernard marked
"Champion." "And when my rheumatism is not troubling me," he says, "I
endeavor to be civil to all dogs, so long as they are gentlemen."

"Yes, sir," said I, for even to me he had been most affable.

At this we had come to a little house off by itself, and Jimmy Jocks
invites me in. "This is their troph