What enhanced the fun, and his affliction, was that instead of frankly facing the situation and going to a bathroom, he tried to clean himself at table. After exhausting the resources of civilisation in the shape of handkerchiefs and napkins and finger-bowls, he used towels—big bathroom towels; and still he found purification as difficult as ever did Macbeth.—
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.”
But it was not a troubled conscience that dimmed his eyes. His bodily eyes saw perfectly. The trouble was the real adhesiveness of the mixture saturating his garments and his skin. The [285] ]language of Macbeth, too, was refined in comparison to his; for, as he glared at the laughers around him, he said ... what I would not repeat, not even in an affidavit.
Our heroine said nothing. She did not join in the laughing. She was generally fond of fun; but on this particular occasion, she seemed to be completely self-absorbed, as sufferers are apt to be. There are times when one craves to be alone. She turned her face to the wall and her back to the company.
5. THE BEAR AND THE PERAMBULATOR
Her master loved her as dearly as ever any man loved a dog; and so, when he was transferred from the north of Upper to the south of Lower Burma, he took her with him. This was lucky for her. She had made a bad impression on the man who came to relieve him, although, as himself a father of children, he might have been expected to appreciate her. It was all a misunderstanding.
The new man had come in advance of his family, but brought with him a perambulator, nicely upholstered; and when the gentleman went upstairs to [286] ]bed, and the servants to their quarters, our heroine naturally proceeded to examine the perambulator, which was exactly the right size for her. There was nobody else in the house whom it suited at all. How could she know, without being told, of the impending arrival of another little thing? Everything thereabouts had been at her disposal hitherto. How could she suspect that this might not be?