‘Most assuredly,’ said the showman, looking daggers at his suffocating sister. ‘May I ask you to describe the creature?’
‘Seventeen feet from the crown to the hoof, but falls off behind,’ said the accurate Mr. Dusautoy; ‘beautiful tawny colour.’
‘Nearly as good as a Lion,’ added Gilbert; but Algernon, fancying the game was by way of giving useful instruction to the children, went on in full swing. ‘Handsomely mottled with darker brown; a ruminating animal; so gentle that in spite of its size, none of my little friends need be alarmed at its vicinity. Inhabits the African deserts, but may be bred in more temperate latitudes. I myself saw an individual in the Jardin des Plantes, which was popularly said never to bend its neck to the ground, but I consider this a vulgar delusion, for on offering it food, it mildly inclined its head.’
‘Let us hope the present specimen is equally condescending,’ said Mr. Ferrars.
‘Eh! what! I see myself!’ said Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, with a tone so inappreciably grand in mystification, that the showman had no choice but to share the universal convulsion of laughter, while Willie rolling on the floor with ecstasy, shouted, ‘Yes, it is you that are the thing with such a long name that it can’t bend its head to the ground!’
‘But too good-natured to be annoyed at folly,’ said Mr. Ferrars, perceiving that it was no sport to him.
‘This is the way my mischievous uncle has served us all in turn,’ said Lucy, advancing; ‘we have all been shown up, and there was mamma a monkey, and I an argus pheasant—’
‘Ah! I see,’ said the gentleman. ‘These are your rural pastimes of the season. Yes, I can take my share in good part, just as I have pelted the masks at the Carnival.’
‘Even a giraffe can bend his head and do at Rome as Rome does,’ murmured Ulick. But instead of heeding the audacious Irishman, Algernon patronized the showman by thanks for his exhibition; and then sitting down by Lucy, asked if he had ever told her of the tricks that he and il Principe Odorico Moretti used to play at Ems on the old Baron Sprawlowsky, while Mr. Ferrars, leaning over his sister’s chair, said aside, ‘I beg your pardon, Albinia; I should not have yielded to Willie. This “rural pastime” is only in season en famille.’
‘Never mind, it served him right.’