"You mean it's a chance they'll have to take." Jane herself thought that porridge would be better, because everyone knew how mad brownies were for porridge, but it was always easiest to let Judy have her own way.
So, bearing a large kettle between them, the two girls staggered out of the cottage between the flying stones—which were not coming as thick and fast as before owing to the fact that almost half the native populace had collapsed.
They set the kettle down by the nearest prostrate figure. "Look," Judy said to him. "Soup. Nice soup."
The native turned a dull glance on them. "We'll have to feed him," Judy decided. "You hold his head up, Jane."
Although she could not repress a shudder of loathing at contact with the alien, Jane obeyed, as always. "Open your mouth, that's a good boy," Judy told him, and opened her own mouth wide to set an example.
The native lifted his heavy, pointed head and looked down her throat with feeble interest. "No, that's not what I mean. Drink this. Nice soup." She prodded his lips with the dripping spoon. The lips parted and the soup passed into the alien interior.
Suddenly the creature's eyes bulged. He began to choke loudly. "There," Jane cried in anguish, "you have poisoned him!"
"Or maybe he doesn't eat with his mouth, like us," Judy speculated. "I never thought of that. Perhaps I poured soup down the equivalent of his ear."
But, once the convulsion was over, the native opened his mouth for more. Despite Jane's cry of protest, Judy poked in another spoonful. "Soup," she said. "Nice soup."
A faint, strange, utterly foreign expression contorted the native's dusty violent face. He was smiling. "Arrr-aff!" he said.