The day's play

by A. A. Milne

Good-bye. Don't forget I am going to play for you. Would it be side to wear flannels? White boots would be a bit lofty, anyhow. Then I shall wear one brown pad on the right leg.

VII

DEAR CHARLES,—Many thanks for your letter. Don't side just because you get up at six o'clock, and feed the cow, or shave the goat, or whatever it is. Other people get up early too. For the last few weeks I have sprung out of bed at seven-thirty. (I always "spring" out—it is so much more classy.) But I doubt if I can keep it up.

The truth is that I have just made an unhappy discovery. I was under the impression that my man's name was Turley; I should say my third of a man, because I share with him two others, but anyhow I thought his whole name was Turley. So I used to write nice little notes, beginning, "If you're waking, call me, Turley," and leave them about for him. He invariably woke at seven and read them—and came and called me, mother dear. Of course I had to get up. Well, I have now heard that his name is really Holland, which makes all the difference. It would be absurd to write him any more notes of that kind. My one satisfaction is that I can claim to own a third of Holland, which is about 4000 square miles. Multiply that by 640 and you get it in acres. Altogether the landowner.

Moreover, Charles, my lad, you are not the one person who knows things about animals. You may be on terms of familiarity with the cow and the goat, but these are not the only beasts. What acquaintance, for example, have you with reptiles? The common newt—do you know anything about him? No. Well, then, now I'll tell you.

When I was seven and John was eight, we went to a naturalist's in Hampstead to inquire the price of newts. They were threepence each, not being quite in season. We bought sixpennyworth; the man put them into a paper bag for us, and we took them up on the Heath to give them a gallop. When we opened the bag we found three newts inside. It seemed impossible that the thing could have happened naturally, so we went back to the shop to explain to the man that he had made a mistake. However, he hadn't; he had merely given us one newt discount. (Remember that when next you're buying them.) Well, we returned to the Heath, and they showed their paces. Now the newt is an amphibious animal (Greek); he is as much at ease in the bathroom as on the mat. So when we got them home we arranged to try them in our bath.

This is where you cry. For a time all went well. They dived, swam (back and front), trod water, returned to life when apparently drowned, and so forth. Then John pulled up the waste-pipe. He says now that he did it inadvertently, but I fancy that he wanted to see what would happen. What did happen was that they got into the whirlpool and disappeared. We turned on both the hot and cold taps to see if they would come back, but they didn't. Apparently you don't. We rushed into the garden to see if they would return by the drain-pipe with the rainwater, but not they. Only the paper bag was left to us ... and (to this day I cannot recall it without a tear) it was John who popped it.

Charles, we never saw those newts again. Crusoe, Cleaver and Robinson were their names. Robinson and Crusoe they were to have been; and when the third came, and seemed to take a fancy to Robinson, we called him Cleaver. Where are they now? In the mighty Thames somewhere, I suppose. So, Charles, if ever you are near the river, keep a friendly eye open for them, will you? They may be a little wild now, but they were good newts in their day.

We had a Buforium too in our time, you must know. I have just made that word up, and it means a place where you keep toads. In our case it was the sink. The toad, as you may not have realised, has no vomerine or maxillary teeth, but he has got a distinct tympanum. However, what I really wanted to say was that the toad has a pyriform tongue of incredible length, by means of which he catches his prey—thus differing from the frog, which leaps at 'em. We used to station a toad opposite one of the walls of the sink—of the Buforium—and then run his breakfast down the side. Sometimes it would be a very long centipede, and then you could have one toad for each end; or a—— What brutes little boys are; I'm not going to tell you any more about toads. (Except to say that his omosternum is generally missing. That must be very annoying.)

Did I ever talk to you about hedgehogs? We kept no end of them, but Peter was the only one who stayed. He used to live in the scullery, so as to see that no black-beetles got about. One night the cook woke up suddenly and remembered that she had left the scullery tap running. So she jumped out of bed and ran downstairs, not even stopping to put on slippers....