Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/311

 those adorable whiskers? There she sits, pensive and sweetly melancholy—dreaming, doubtless, of her sylvan home far away, where the lion roareth and the whang-doodle mourneth. For her I hoard my every day's takings (although those dishonest keeper always take them away); for her I snatch feathers from bonnets, flowers from buttonholes, pipes from pockets; for her do I faithfully watch, day by day, after a set of false teeth. But still, my fluttering heart, lie still! How can I hope? How can I even approach her to throw myself before her, to offer her my all, to take one pull at that bewitching tail? Alas! my lot is despair. There is a gibbon in a nearer cage than this, who is making eyes at her this moment. Confound him! May this Gibbon quickly Decline and Fall! Ah, I am racked with hate and jealousy! I will even go and pitch into the little brown capuchin. And now I bethink me, there is a bonnet-pin I have today acquired with the débris of a hat and false front. I will get behind him and stick that bonnet-pin far into the pig-faced baboon. I owe him one for himself.