regard our recreations. And we give him no sort of attention. Poor beast! He cannot recognise the preparation of tea and the acquirement of a Spanish vocabulary, nor yet the production of lovely pictures, when these phenomena present themselves to his notice. To him they are as the weaving of sand-ropes. (And who shall say that he is wrong?) Boredom unspeakable descends upon him. He surely hates us. At one point only our proceedings acquire a certain interest in his sight. It is when my wife gives him food. I have referred to marmalade sandwiches. But this is not the tale of his luxuries. Plum-cake he knows, and sugar and macaroons and cucumber and radishes. Gingerbread, too, he accepts. But we enjoy his gingerbread more than he, for its stickiness wraps it round his bit, and for long his tongue explores for outlying portions. Since the discovery of this entertainment we carry gingerbread always. Besides brown bread, he also eats brown-paper and tissue-paper and string. And he would once have eaten Oxide of Chromium, but I rescued the tube. And there was a camp-stool which we could never find. But perhaps I insinuate an injustice. Let it stand. He has more on his conscience than a camp-stool. For at half-past five he begins to bray. It is the signal for departure, and we depart, not because we wish
