“But I am quite well now, and I will never be ill any more.”
“Then,” said Clio, “perhaps you would tell us your story now. Love stories suit the small hours.”
I am afraid Clio had wanted to hear that story all the time. But she was the incarnation of outward propriety, and had struggled against her wishes. And now it was Erato who was unwilling.
“I can’t,” she said in a low voice. “I could have done it before—earlier in the night—but now it reminds me of too many things.”
“Then,” said Clio rather snappishly, “I will ask Thalia.”
Thalia had a good-humoured smile, and a very pleasant voice, but her story was nothing more than the following:—
There was once a camel who had got sick of the menagerie business. And this was pardonable, because the menagerie had now been on tour for six weeks, and the trombone in the band had been out of tune all the time. There were other things that made the camel weary. The untamed tigress had a bad cough, and kept him awake at night. The showman had called him the ship of the desert at each performance, and he wanted to be called something else for a change. On one occasion he had been lying in motionless dignity, and a little boy in a tight suit had asked if he was stuffed. He had been kicked by his keeper, ridden by children, starved by the manager, and jested upon by young men with penny cigars, who sucked intermittent oranges and called one another Chollie. He was sick of the menagerie business, and he wanted to get out of it. So he made himself disagreeable. As he was passing the band-stand one night, he reached out his great neck and ate the trombone part to “Nancy Lee.” This made him want to be a sailor and sing “heave-ho” during the rest of the term of his natural life. But where was the sea? He’d got no sea. He hadn’t an notion, as people say. So he gave up his mind to being disagreeable again. He knocked down a beautiful child with golden hair, and trod on her, so that she died; and the management had to send her parents a gratis admission before they’d stop grumbling. Then the camel took up his position in front of the lion’s den, and said sarcastic things to the lioness. This enraged her; and not being able to reach the camel, she ate a portion of the lion-tamer, to show her spirit. Finally he walked up to one of the elephants who had a dummy tusk, and did a little comic dentist business, insomuch that the audience jeered at the showman, and the showman said several things which were not set down in the printed guide to the show. That night the camel kicked his keeper, out of reciprocity, and then talked very high talk indeed in the still midnight hours to a hyena who had seen the world.
“I am going away,” the camel said, with a pathetic gasp which was the nearest he could do to a sigh. “My soul is being stifled—quite stifled—in this place.”
“That’s the bread,” said the hyena decidedly. “We get nothing but bread.”