"I would rather go to the Zoological Gardens."
I can read in his eyes that he is thinking of the captive lion. Ugly human instincts are waking up in his soul. The mouse is forgotten and the snail; and the chaffinches have built their nest to no purpose.
At last I get up and say, bluntly, without any further explanation:
"You are not going to the Zoological Gardens. Now we'll go home."
And home we go. But we are not in a good temper.
Of course, I get over it and I buy an enormous money-box pig. Also we put the money into it and he thinks that most interesting.
But, later in the afternoon, I find him in the bed-room engaged in a piteous game.
He has built a cage, in which he has imprisoned the pig. He is teasing it and hitting it with his whip, while he keeps shouting to it:
"You can't get out and bite me, you stupid pig! You can't get out!"