oaching." "That is true." "The
dog will be spoiled for want of practice." "That will be a pity." "Thank
you, conscience--won't it be a sin?" Conscience is silent, so you take
that for granted. "Hadn't I better take out a license this year?" "Oh!
it wouldn't be right you should go without one." "Certainly not,
(somewhat boldly;) I _will_ get my license directly. Poor
Rover!--well--how very fond that dog is of me--it would be highly
ungrateful not to make a return even to a dog. I ought to be fond of
him. I--am--very fond of him." Then you confess, Eusebius, that you
should be very sorry to part with him. Conscience says, "Do you mean to
say you should be sorry to find out the real owner?" "Really,
conscience," you reply, "there can be no harm in being sorry; but you
are becoming very impertinent, and asking too many questions." Here
conscience nods--is asleep--is in a coma, Eusebius--fairly mesmerized by
you, and follows you at your beck wherever you choose to lead her. And
so you take her to your stable to look at Rover: and you want a
suggestion how you can stop Rover's wandering propensities; and
conscience, being in a state of _clairvoyance_, bids you tie him up. You
ask how--"by the teeth;" so you order him a good plate of meat inside,
your stable-door locked, and you replenish that plate for a week or
more, and have a few conferences with Rover in your parlour--and the dog
is tied. Then you didn't like the name of Rover--but liked Chance.
Conscience suggested the name as a palliative, as something between true
proprietorship and theft--it gave you a protective right, and took away
the sting of the possession. You fortified yourself in this position, as
cunningly as the French at Tahiti. But how happened it, Eusebius, that
when any friend asked you if you had found the owner, you turned off the
subject always so ingeniously, or denied that you had a Rover, but one
Chance, certainly a fine dog?--and how came it that you never took him
in the direction of the country from whence the regiment had come? And
yet, if the truth could be known, would it not turn out, Eusebius, that
fears did often come across your pleasures, and your affection for
Chance? and had a child but asked you, as you might have been crossing a
stile, in quest, with Chance before you, as you did the soldier, "whose
dog's that?" you would have stammered a little--and almost, in your
affection, have gone down upon your knees to have begged him as a gift