“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.”