"I've read it."
"I know you'll—"
"I've read it."
GUINEA-PIGS.
It was with ill-concealed trepidation that I approached the Pontifical Personage who presides over Messrs. Barkrod and Tomridge's Zoological Department. The recollection of my previous and only encounter with him still burned in my memory. I had gone thither with a young nephew on whom in a rash moment I had urged the satisfaction to be derived from the study of natural history and he had countered with a birthday and a demand that I should convert precept to practice by providing him with a pet.
The P.P. greeted us with benignant expectancy. His white apron merely accentuated the obvious fact that he had come in a limousine. I have since decided that he mistook me for an eccentric peer. It seems that eccentric peers and struggling journalists are apt to provide the same air of sartorial abandon to the eye of the uninitiated.
It was the young nephew, however, who made the running. The entire menagerie whistled, barked, sat up on its hind legs, performed acrobatic feats and said, "Scratch poor Polly," at his discriminating behest. Finally he reached a point where he simply could not decide between a Goliath cockatoo at £22 10s. and a white-faced Douroucouli at twenty-seven guineas.