Page:Sheila and Others (1920).djvu/149

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CONSIDERING KEDDO
137

character was unimpeachable, and his reliance upon ours unshakable. At least so was it in the beginning, and when I look back over the history of our intercourse, it becomes more and more painfully clear to me that any later deviation from the strict line of honesty on his part had its origin in us. Even so, he never resorted to prevarication, or the canine equivolent, subterfuge, save under extreme provocation, when the family demands seemed to him so erratic as to suggest positive aberration. Moreover, it was at one point only that he permitted himself any trifling with the truth, and that was after the injudicious disclosure to him that well-behaved doggies were sometimes allowed to accompany the family on the afore-mentioned constitutionals. This knowledge entirely changed life's aspect to him, rubbing off the tender bloom of early innocence.

After once grasping that fact, his days were devoted to nursing designs for the achievement of this intoxicating pleasure, and it was evident that he never again wholly lost those dark suspicions of our candor which perhaps were only too well founded.

An unfortunate experience of having once