Page:Sheila and Others (1920).djvu/153

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CONSIDERING KEDDO
141

struggling with the question: "Did I do something wrong?"

With neither power of speech nor of gesticulation, one is certainly handicapped in this world. I realized it when I considered Keddo. A tail, of course, is an expressive substitute, but it only transmits, it doesn't receive messages. Keddo and I found it hard sometimes to cross the gulfs that separated our worlds. He would sit opposite me respectfully and receptively, pause, look concerned, cock his pretty head on one side meditatively and finally jump up as if to say, "What a stupid game. It comes to nothing. Now let's play something else." Once an idea could be introduced into the active little brain, it was instantly seized and applied. As when he learned that one gave the right paw, never the left, in a hand-shake. Two minutes sufficed for this important fact to be made his own, and it was never forgotten, but for the most part there were no symbols by which to convey the idea.

It is hard to realize what a flood of light upon our own complex motives and impulses elementary intelligences can impart. It is almost startling. In Keddo's artless ways,