"Now, Nalla, you've had a grand time, and you'd better come out and get dried off, so come along, old fellow."
Nalla looked at him with his absurdly small eyes, in which there surely lurked a mischievous twinkle, but made no move.
"Hurry up, you lazy chap!" called Cæsar laughingly. "Don't be so slow. We have to prepare for the parade."
Nalla manifestly understood what was wanted of him, but, instead of obeying, retreated further into the pool.
This angered Cæsar, whose temper was of the quickest, anyway, and he stamped his foot as he shouted:
"Here, now, no nonsense! You must come out, and that right away. Do you hear?"
Nalla, with admirably simulated reluctance, moved slowly shoreward, until he was within a few yards of Cæsar, and then, pointing his trunk at him, he squirted from it a quantity of muddy water that drenched and dirtied the boy from head to foot, and nearly knocked him over.
Almost blinded, and wholly enraged, Cæsar picked up a stick and threw it at the elephant with all his might. But he might as well have thrown it at the side of a house for all the effect it had on Nalla's massive head. The cute little eyes only twinkled the more merrily, and their owner backed away again, as if he had changed his mind about coming ashore.
Cæsar was in a towering passion. The elephant had certainly added injury to insult, and had it been in the boy's power to punish him severely, he would have delighted in doing it.