“Why?”
“It’s so—replete.”
Peter laughed. “Perhaps it has been fed and wants exercise.”
“On a lead? Up and down the Park for twenty minutes every day? Oh, Peter, why haven’t I too got a tiger to sit beside yours on the wall?”
“It doesn’t sit on a wall,” retorted Peter, who was inclined to take her tiger seriously.
“Darling, you know it’s only a Nestlé’s-Milk Advertisement Cat. The fat creamy one. We’ll call it a tiger, if you like. It’s a very fine cat.”
Peter picked up the pair of sand-shoes which Stuart had left a-sprawl on the fender; and musingly fingered the torn soles: “Millionaire’s footgear,” she murmured scornfully; certainly they were in a disgracefully tattered condition. She pulled the two elephants from the mantelpiece, and laid one at rest in either shoe.... “Elephant cradles....”
“Are you talking in your sleep?” queried Merle.
“I was pondering the matter of Cheap Sentiment,” lied Peter. “I’ve got whole Marshes of Cheap Sentiment in my being, which I dare not show, nor even countenance, but which are unmistakably spreading.”
Merle snuggled deeper into her arm-chair, and cooed encouragement: “Go on, Peter!”