‘Tuck-too! Tuck-too!’
VII
Yet there’s many great speakers more tiresome than he,
‘Tuck-too! Tuck-too!’
My goggle-eyed cherub, that’s living with me!
‘Tuck-too! Tuck-too!’
‘Oo—oo—oo—oo!’
XVI [113]
THE KITTEN’S CATCH
He is a common grey kitten; but he is the last of a large family, and his mother is devoted to him, and takes great pains about his education. Now that he can run about, his mother fetches indoors little field-mice for him, and baby rats from the stable; and so the kitten is quickly learning the trade of all his tribe. But mother was digesting last night (11/6/09) and would not run about with him, would only flick her tail; and chasing mother’s tail became gradually monotonous for a kitten that had had a field-mouse in his paws, to say nothing of a baby rat.
So he went and spoke to the big fat frog that was sitting in the corner of the dining-room, face to the wall, like a pupil at school sent to stand in the corner as a punishment. Only, the frog was not being punished. He was catching flies. He looked round at the kitten coming near and trying to draw attention. He is a pot-bellied frog, of elderly look, so that his leaping [114] ]seems out of character. On this occasion, however, his deportment was unimpeachable. He looked at the kitten earnestly, but never spoke, moving nothing but his head, as he turned it round to see him. He gazed at the importunate little cat, as once a gaitered bishop gazed at a newspaper-boy who wanted to speak to him, but seemed unlikely to be polite. “I wish no ill to you, but please leave me alone.” That was what the frog’s look seemed to say; but he uttered no sound. Perhaps he thought that talking might disturb the flies he was catching, just as the gentle angler sometimes prays for silence, lest a whisper be heard by the fish.