Chapter Three.
“Oh! Kill me Quick and put me out of Pain.”
The story of my life? Was that what you asked me for, my little foster son? I see Warlock pricking one ear. He is going to listen too, is he?
Ah! well, my friends, my life has been a very long and a very eventful one, for I have travelled very far and seen much, and you all know I am getting old. Dick is laughing and chuckling to himself. Of course, he thinks that I am centuries old, but that is only because he himself is so young.
Chammy, the chameleon, looks down at Shireen with one of his droll eyes, while he watches a fly on the ceiling with the other. He holds up a hand, too, opening and shutting it as he remarks—
“Don’t give yourself airs about your age, Shireen. Look at me. It is a hundred years yesterday since I came to life again.”
“Came to life again, Chammy,” says Warlock, winking to Dick. “Why, what are you telling us?”
“The truth,” said the chameleon. “One thousand one hundred years ago yesterday—and it doesn’t seem very long to look back to—after a good dinner on butterflies I retired into the hollow of a young banian tree in an African forest to have a nap. I had dined heartily, and I slept long, so long that the tree grew up over me. And it grew and grew and grew for a thousand years till it became the most wonderful tree in all the forest. But one day it was rent in twain by a lightning flash, and—I awoke and crawled out and found a moth and swallowed it.”
“Tse, tse, tse!” said Dick.
“We can’t be expected to swallow your story though, Chammy,” said Warlock.