FullReads

“Daddy!” asked Dimples.

“Yes, boy.”

“Do you fink that the roses know us?”

Dimples, in spite of his impish naughtiness, had a way of looking such a perfectly innocent and delightfully kissable little person that one felt he really might be a good deal nearer to the sweet secrets of Nature than his elders. However, Daddy was in a material mood.

“No, boy; how could the roses know us?”

“The big yellow rose at the corner of the gate knows me.”

“How do you know that?”

“‘Cause it nodded to me yesterday.”

Laddie roared with laughter.

“That was just the wind, Dimples.”

“No, it was not,” said Dimples, with conviction. “There was none wind. Baby was there. Weren’t you, Baby?”

“The wose knew us,” said Baby, gravely.

“Beasts know us,” said Laddie. “But them beasts run round and make noises. Roses don’t make noises.”

“Yes, they do. They rustle.”

“Woses wustle,” said Baby.

“That’s not a living noise. That’s an all-the-same noise. Different to Roy, who barks and makes different noises all the time. Fancy the roses all barkin’ at you. Daddy, will you tell us about animals?”

That is one of the child stages which takes us back to the old tribe life–their inexhaustible interest in animals, some distant echo of those long nights when wild men sat round the fires and peered out into the darkness, and whispered about all the strange and deadly creatures who fought with them for the lordship of the earth. Children love caves, and they love fires and meals out of doors, and they love animal talk–all relics of the far distant past.

“What is the biggest animal in South America, Daddy?”

Daddy, wearily: “Oh, I don’t know.”

“I s’pose an elephant would be the biggest?”

“No, boy; there are none in South America.”

“Well, then, a rhinoceros?”

“No, there are none.”

“Well, what is there, Daddy?”

“Well, dear, there are jaguars. I suppose a jaguar is the biggest.”

“Then it must be thirty-six feet long.”

“Oh, no, boy; about eight or nine feet with his tail.”

“But there are boa-constrictors in South America thirty-six feet long.”

“That’s different.”

“Do you fink,” asked Dimples, with his big, solemn, grey eyes wide open, “there was ever a boa-‘strictor forty-five feet long?”

“No, dear; I never heard of one.”

“Perhaps there was one, but you never heard of it. Do you fink you would have heard of a boa-‘strictor forty-five feet long if there was one in South America?”

“Well, there may have been one.”

“Daddy,” said Laddie, carrying on the cross-examination with the intense earnestness of a child, “could a boa-constrictor swallow any small animal?”

“Yes, of course he could.”

“Could he swallow a jaguar?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. A jaguar is a very large animal.”

“Well, then,” asked Dimples, “could a jaguar swallow a boa-‘strictor?”

“Silly ass,” said Laddie. “If a jaguar was only nine feet long and the boa-constrictor was thirty-five feet long, then there would be a lot sticking out of the jaguar’s mouth. How could he swallow that?”

“He’d bite it off,” said Dimples. “And then another slice for supper and another for breakfast–but, I say, Daddy, a ‘stricter couldn’t swallow a porkpine, could he? He would have a sore throat all the way down.”

Shrieks of laughter and a welcome rest for Daddy, who turned to his paper.

“Daddy!”

He put down his paper with an air of conscious virtue and lit his pipe.

“Well, dear?”

“What’s the biggest snake you ever saw?”

“Oh, bother the snakes! I am tired of them.”

But the children were never tired of them. Heredity again, for the snake was the worst enemy of arboreal man.

“Daddy made soup out of a snake,” said Laddie. “Tell us about that snake, Daddy.”

Children like a story best the fourth or fifth time, so it is never any use to tell them that they know all about it. The story which they can check and correct is their favourite.

“Well, dear, we got a viper and we killed it. Then we wanted the skeleton to keep and we didn’t know how to get it. At first we thought we would bury it, but that seemed too slow. Then I had the idea to boil all the viper’s flesh off its bones, and I got an old meat-tin and we put the viper and some water into it and put it above the fire.”