His zest in the ride vanished. He looked reproachfully at the Mistress and tried to bury his head under her circling arm. Lad loathed dog shows; as does every dog of high-strung nerves and higher intelligence. The Mistress, after one experience, had refrained from breaking his heart by taking him to those horrors known as "two-or-more-day Shows." But, as she herself took such childish delight in the local one-day contests, she had schooled herself to believe Lad must enjoy them, too.
Lad, as a matter of fact, preferred these milder ordeals, merely as a man might prefer one day of jail or toothache to two or more days of the same misery. But—even as he knew many lesser things—he knew the adored Mistress and Master reveled in such atrocities as dog shows; and that he, for some reason, was p
