When I used to lie there thinking, I did not seem to be on Clapham Common, but far away on the banks of some huge lake in a foreign land with the efts and lizards, crocodiles; and the big worms that I sometimes found away from their holes in wet weather became serpents in a moist jungle.
Of course I got all these ideas from books, and great trouble I found myself in one day for playing at tiger-hunting in the garden at home with Buzzy, my aunt’s great tabby tom-cat; and for pretending that Nap was a lion in the African desert. But I’ll tell you that in a chapter to itself, for these matters had a good deal to do with the alteration in my mode of life.
Chapter Two.
First Thoughts of Hunting.
As I told you, my uncle had no children, and the great house at Streatham was always very quiet. In fact one of my aunt’s strict injunctions was that she should not be disturbed by any noise of mine. But aunt had her pets—Buzzy, and Nap.
Buzzy was the largest striped tom-cat, I think, that I ever saw, and very much to my aunt’s annoyance he became very fond of me, so much so that if he saw me going out in the garden he would leap off my aunt’s lap, where she was very fond of nursing him, stroking his back, beginning with his head and ending by drawing his tail right through her hand; all of which Buzzy did not like, but he would lie there and swear, trying every now and then to get free, but only to be held down and softly whipped into submission.
Buzzy decidedly objected to being nursed, and as soon as he could get free he would rush after me down the garden, where he would go bounding along, arching his back, and setting up the fur upon his tail. Every now and then he would hide in some clump, and from thence charge out at me, and if I ran after him, away he would rush up a tree trunk, and then crouch on a branch with glowing eyes, tearing the while with his claws at the bark as if in a tremendous state of excitement, ready to bound down again, and race about till he was tired, after which I had only to stoop down and say, “Come on,” when he would leap on to my back and perch himself upon my shoulder, purring softly as I carried him round the grounds.
I used to have some good fun, too, with Nap, when my aunt was out; but she was so jealous of her favourite’s liking for me that at last I never used to have a game with Nap when she was at home.