"You miserable Bruin, you don't know what's good for you; you can't tell a light-wood from a gum-tree, and you'll die of starvation, or else the boys will find you, and they will kill you, thinking you are a wild bush bear, for you don't show any signs of good education, after all the trouble I have taken to teach you manners. I am afraid you will come to a bad end."
And so he did. The third time Bruin loosed the clothes line he had a six hours' start before he was missed, and sure enough he hid himself in a lightwood for want of sense, and that very night the boys saw him by the light of the moon, and Hugh Boyle climbed up the tree and knocked him down with a waddy.
Pussy, Philip's sixth domestic, had attained her majority; she had never gone after snakes in her youth, and had always avoided bad company. She did her duty in the house as a good mouser, and when mice grew scarce she went hunting for game; she had a hole under the eaves near the chimney, through which she could enter the hut at any time of the night or day. While Philip was musing after tea on the "Pons Asinorum" by the light of a tallow candle, Pussy was out poaching for quail, and as soon as she caught one she brought it home, dropped it on the floor, rubbed her side against Philip's boot, and said, "I have brought a little game for breakfast." Then Philip stroked her along the back, after which she lay down before the fire, tucked in her paws and fell asleep, with a good conscience.
But many bush cats come to an unhappy and untimely end by giving way to the vice of curiosity. When Dinah, the vain kitten, takes her first walk abroad in spring time, she observes something smooth and shiny gliding gently along. She pricks up her ears, and gazes at the interesting stranger; then she goes a little nearer, softly lifting first one paw and then another.
The stranger is more intelligent than Dinah. He says to himself, "I know her sort well, the silly thing. Saw her ages ago in the Garden. She wants mice and frogs and such things--takes the bread out of my mouth. Native industry must be protected." so the stranger brings his head round under the grass and waits for Dinah, who is watching his tail. The tail moves a little and then a little more. Dinah says, "It will be gone if I don't mind," and she jumps for it. At that instant the snake strikes her on the nose with his fangs. Dinah's fur rises on end with sudden fright, she shakes her head, and the snake drops off. She turns away, and says, "This is frightful; what a deceitful world! Life is not worth living." Her head feels queer, and being sleepy she lies down, and is soon a dead cat.
That summer was very hot at Nyalong, one hundred and ten degrees in the shade. Philip began to find his bed of stringy bark very hard, and as it grew older it curled together so much that he could scarcely turn in it from one side to the other. So he made a mattress which he stuffed with straw, and he found it much softer than the stringy bark. But after a while the mattress grew flat, and the stuffing lumpy. Sometimes on hot days he took out his bed, and after shaking it, he laid it down on the grass; his blankets he hung on the fence for many reasons which he wanted to get rid of.
The water in the forty-acre to the south was all dried up. An old black snake with a streak of orange along his ribs grew thirsty. His last meal was a mouse, and he said, "That was a dry mouthful, and wants something to wash it down." He knew his way to the water-hole at the end of the garden, but he had to pass the hut, which when he travelled that way the summer before was unoccupied. After creeping under the bottom rail of the fence, he raised his head a little, and looked round. He said, "I see there's another tenant here"--Bruin was then alive and was sitting on the top of his stump eating gum leaves--"I never saw that fellow so low down in the world before; I wonder what he is doing here; been lagged, I suppose for something or other. He is a stupid, anyway, and won't take any notice even if he sees me."
Sam and Puss were both blinking their eyes in the shade of the lightwood, and whisking the flies from their ears. Maggie was walking about with beak open, showing her parched tongue; the heat made her low-spirited.
The snake had crept as far as Philip's mattress, which was lying on the grass, when Maggie saw him. She instantly gave the alarm, "A snake, a snake!" for she knew he was a bad character. Sam and Puss jumped up and began to bark; Joey said, "There is na luck aboot the hoose." Bruin was too stupid to say anything. The snake said, "Here is a terrible row all at once, I must make for a hole." He had a keen eye for a hole, and he soon saw one. It was a small one, in Philip's mattress, almost hidden by the seam, and had been made most likely by a splinter or a nail. The snake put his head in it, saying, "Any port in a storm," then drew in his whole length, and settled himself comfortably among the straw.
Beasts and birds have instincts, and a certain amount of will and understanding, but no memory worth mentioning. For that reason the domestics never told Philip about the snake in his mattress, they had forgotten all about it. If Sam had buried a bone, he would have remembered it a week afterwards, if he was hungry; but as for snakes, it was, "out of sight, out of mind."