human
Now I think we made a mistake in our treatment of him from the start. We didn't like him when we first saw him and we let him know it. We froze him out in the beginning. I know how I feel toward people that I think don't like me. They bring out the worst side of me every time. Now Anthony must have a lot of good stuff in him or he couldn't have acted the way he did today. It's up to us to bring it out, and I think the way to do it is to treat him as if we thought there was nothing but a 'best' side to him. We mustn't act as if we thought he was going to do something mean all the time. Take, for instance, the time we thought somebody had hidden Eeny-Meeny, and you jumped on him as a matter of course.
gpt
We thought he'd be likely to do it,
human
That's exactly the trouble, said Katherine.
gpt
We always thought he'd be 'likely' to do something mean, but we never thought he'd be 'likely' to do something good. Everything that has happened around here has been blamed on Anthony as a matter of course. We've never given him a fair chance. You boys didn't let him in on the secret of those council seats because you were afraid he'd give it away. That was wrong. You should have let him help and never doubted him for a minute. People generally do just what you expect them to do. If we took Anthony seriously and acted as though we could rely on his judgment he'd soon have a judgment we could rely on. I say we've had ahold of the wrong handle of Anthony all the while. We knocked the boasting out of him with a sledgehammer and that was all right in that case; but for the rest of it we've got to show that we respect and trust him, and take my word for it, he won't disappoint us. Don't you think that's what's been the trouble, Uncle Teddy?