"Rotten little crumb," Judy fumed, glaring balefully at the snake. But Droozle wrote serenely on, his ruby eyes glowing enigmatically.
Jean interposed magnanimously, "I see now that I have been inexcusably selfish with Droozle. I've kept him cooped up here, not wanting to bother with him while I was out on my painting trips. True, he was busy writing. But most of his knowledge of Earth has come from books; he can't write classics about living things unless he sees living things."
As she picked up his trend of thought, Judy's face lost its resentful expression, and something like seraphic righteousness spread over it. "I see what you mean. Just how did you plan to make up for this shut-in feeling that poor Droozle must have been suffering so much from for all these years?"
"Oh, Judy, I'm so glad you asked me!" He threw wide his arms to the world. "Out into the wind and the rain we shall go, and there I will draw my pictures while he observes; then into the roaring, brawling taverns we shall go, where life thrives in all its abundance. I've been robbing him by shutting him up here."
"Jean, look at Droozle," the girl exclaimed, pointing. "He has stopped in the middle of a page and is starting on a fresh one."
Droozle wrote, "Please not out into the wind and the rain. Please not into the roaring, brawling taverns where life thrives in all its abundance. I loathe shudder and tilt."
"Loathing is no reason to turn away from reality, Droozle," admonished the artist. "Things are not nearly so bad as they used to be anyway. In all justice, shudder and tilt requires far less body-English than its ancestor, rock and roll."
Droozle argued carefully, "You will recall I heard some of it once when you took me into a particularly dirty bar over in the west end of town. I feel, as a result, that I have observed this type of data to the extent that I can write of it competently without further study."
"Oh, but that was months ago," enthused Jean. "The tunes have all changed by now. New pows appear on the tapes every week. You have missed countless sockeroos already, being cooped up here. You will bless me, once you get accustomed to the realities of life—see if you don't. Heigh-ho the wind and the rain!"