n't, my boy,' said the boss. 'From now on he's the
honoured guest. He shall wear a gold collar and order what he wants for
dinner. And now let's be getting home. It's time you were in bed.'

* * * * *

Mother used to say, 'If you're a good dog, you will be happy. If you're
not, you won't,' but it seems to me that in this world it is all a
matter of luck. When I did everything I could to please people, they
wanted to shoot me; and when I did nothing except run away, they
brought me back and treated me better than the most valuable
prize-winner in the kennels. It was puzzling at first, but one day I
heard the boss talking to a friend who had come down from the city.

The friend looked at me and said, 'What an ugly mongrel! Why on earth
do you have him about? I thought you were so particular about your
dogs?'

And the boss replied, 'He may be a mongrel, but he can have anything he
wants in this house. Didn't you hear how he saved Peter from being
kidnapped?'

And out it all came about the brigands.

'The kid called them brigands,' said the boss. 'I suppose that's how it
would strike a child of that age. But he kept mentioning the name Dick,
and that put the police on the scent. It seems there's a kidnapper well
known to the police all over the country as Dick the Snatcher. It was
almost certainly that scoundrel and his gang. How they spirited the
child away, goodness knows, but they managed it, and the dog tracked
them and scared them off. We found him and Peter together in the woods.
It was a narrow escape, and we have to thank this animal here for it.'

What could I say? It was no more use trying to put them right than it
had been when I mistook Toto for a rat. Peter had gone to sleep that
night pretending about the brigands to pass the time, and when he awoke
he still believed in them. He was that sort of child. There was nothing
that I could do about it.

Round the corner, as the boss was speaking, I saw the kennel-man coming
with a plate in his hand. It smelt fine, and he was headed straight for
me.

He put the plate down before me. It was liver, which I love.

'Yes,' went on the boss, 'if it hadn't been for him, Peter would have
been kidnapped and scared half to death, and I should be poorer, I
suppose, by whatever the scoundrels had chosen to hold me up for.'

I am an honest dog, and hate to obtain credit under false pretences,
but--liver is liver. I let it go at that.