But he did not start then, because he ate of circus bread, which was so exceedingly diseased that he fell on a bed of sickness. And the circus company saw that he would die, and advertised him for sale very cheap. And he was bought by an ardent young curate who had an enthusiastic but indistinct idea that the poor beast might be utilised to illustrate a lecture on the Holy Land.
Now the curate was a very humane man, and lodged the camel meanwhile at a livery stable. And while he was writing a sermon against all manner of pride, that night a message came to him from the livery stable to say that the camel had very bad spasms, and had kicked a large hole in the ostler. The curate, from force of habit, sent the poor quadruped a pound of tea, a bottle of port, and a tract called, “Mother’s Mangle; or, Have you a Penny for the Ticket?” The ostler drank the port, and the camel ate the tea. So much tea made him very nervous, and out of compassion they put a cat in the stable to keep him company.
“Pleased to meet you,” said the cat. “Will you sing something?” The cat knew perfectly well, of course, that camels cannot sing; it wanted to make the animal return the polite inquiry, and so get a chance of letting off an erotic song which it had learned in the stables. But the camel was not such a fool as that.
“I dislike music,” he said. “I went in search of culture, and never got started. I also went in search of domesticity, and never got started. I am now going on a third pilgrimage,—but it will not be in search of music.”
“Do you like milk?” said the cat rather inconsequently.
“No,” said the camel.
“Do you like being scratched under the left ear?”
“No,” said the camel.
“Can you catch mice and kill them slowly?”
“Look here,” said the camel, now justly irritated, “you’re not the Catechism, and you’re not the Census; what’s the point of all these questions?”