“ ‘I see,’ I said. ‘You take the tub off her, and show her to the people, and put it back again. Yes, she would know you!’
“ ‘Yes,’ he repeated, rather proudly, ‘she know me—Patsy, Patsy! Presently, you bet, we catch lot more, and make a cage, and put them in.’
“He was gazing very kindly at the little creature, who on her gray hind legs was anxiously begging for the tub to come down and hide her, and I said: ‘But isn’t it rather a miserable life for this poor little devil?’
“He gave me a very queer look. ‘There’s lots of people,’ he said—and his voice sounded as if I’d hurt him—‘never gits a chance to see a ’coon’—and he dropped the tub over the racoon. . . .
“Well! Can you conceive anything more pitiful than that poor little wild creature of the open, begging and begging for a tub to fall over it and shut out all the light and air? Doesn’t it show what misery caged things have to go through?”
“But, surely,” I said, “those other people would feel the same as you. The little white-coated man was only a servant.”
He seemed to run them over in his memory. “Not one!” he answered slowly. “Not a single one! I am sure it never even occurred to them—why should it? They were there to enjoy themselves.”
We walked in silence till I said:
“I can’t help feeling that your little white-coated man was acting good-heartedly according to his lights.”
“Quite! And after all what are the sufferings of a racoon compared with the enlargement of the human mind?”