tion in the family was secure. I knew it was good for the master to have something to be firm about domestically, too. It was also good for Keddo. Anyway, he accepted it as a part of the proper ordering of affairs, and wagged his tail more vociferously at the master's latchkey than almost anybody's, which was a very good idea too.
Not by any means the least of Keddo's useful little ways was his firm devotion to Janet at meal-time. Solitary meals for the maid has always seemed to me the weakest spot in our domestic ordering, a thing unwholesome and unnatural. One gets hardened to it as one does to all the other anomalies of our social maladjustment, but never reconciled. When I was obliged to go to the kitchen one day at Janet's lunch-hour, and saw confiding, eager little Keddo industriously sitting up at her side soliciting a bite, I inwardly rejoiced. It might be bad for his digestion, but I knew it was good for hers. I never heard her cheerful, high-pitched, "He-e-e-e-" sounding about the house, without a grateful sense that Keddo's discrimination between us was along the humanistic lines of affection, not the artificial and inhibiting ones of social standing.
