"Anxious expectancy."
stealing from us, and can't overcome it. He always pretends to have an appointment with a human, more especially if visitors are about. He sits on his perch with as much pre-occupation as he can cram on his
ugly face, and looks expectantly towards the door. Every time a door opens, he glances anxiously over his shoulder, after which he assumes an expression of annoyed importance, as who would say, "This is all very fine, but it isn't business. When people make appointments they should keep them." I have even caught.
him making believe to look at an imaginary watch. If he would only attend to business instead of playing
the fool, he might snatch a real one from somebody's hand, as I have done.
"How's the weather this morning, keeper?"
The orang-outang is just as annoying, and would be more so if we could see him. He is away from here, over in the sloths' house where they used to keep Sally, but we know all about him. Nice fuss they make over him, just because he's got no tail; trying to make the deformity fashionable among us, I suppose, like the fox in the story. There he is, with a cage almost as big as this, and warmer, all to himself. Has a blanket to sleep in, and a special keeper as valet to call him in the morning, and bring his shaving water. Can stay in his blanket all day if he likes, no one else to pull him up by the tail, not only having no tail to pull, but no neighbours to pull it. And all this by way of reward for positive degeneration, physical, moral, and mental; in fact, for his degraded approximation to a low animal type, the human, and for his cadging servility—going so far, I am told, as to shake hands with visitors, and with his own servant, the keeper. He is allowed, now and again, to come out of his cage and crawl slothfully about—not having the courage to bolt up the chimney—if there were one—or to bite the keeper's fingers. There he sits, bloated, coddled, waited on (they even give him tea with a cup and spoon!), while I, with becoming instincts, a Latin name twice as long as his, and a charming tail, I—well, there, I lose patience when I think of it. Where's that little brown capuchin?
I don't know how big the Aye-aye is, never having seen him, but if he is no bigger
