Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/250

 so often as he did at first—chiefly because of that piece of jewellery in his nose. That has made a very peaceable dromedary of Tom, for when he takes a walk the keeper snaps one end of a neat little piece of chain upon the ring, and keeps the other in his hand. And Tom will do anything rather than have his nose pulled.

At a time when Tom is in the seclusion of the stable—perhaps invisible—approach the rails with an air of having a biscuit about you. Promptly Tom will emerge from his lair, with a startling stride and a disconcerting reach of neck.

Make no further sign of biscuit. Then, if Self be by, you shall find that he has imparted to Tom a certain polish of manner surprising in a camel. Self will tell Tom to beg, and Tom will beg immediately; the supplication consisting in standing on three legs and throwing the right fore-foot negligently across the left knee. Thereat you probably give him a biscuit. But if you remain obdurate, or have come biscuitless, Tom's politeness evaporates at once. He turns his back upon his visitor with a certain studied rudeness of manner—a contumelious nose-in-air tail-turning—and stalks disgustedly back to his boudoir.

Any other camel will do this, and it is natural. Why do these human creatures come to the rails unprovided with biscuits? What are they for? So the camel turns up his nose—and a camel can do this; watch him—and flounces away.

Now, I like Bob, and I like Rose, so far as one may like a camel; and I like Tom, so far as Tom will allow it. But that doesn't in the least reconcile me to the juvenile natural history book. You can't conscientiously look Bob or Tom in the face and call him a ship of the desert, or a ship of any kind. You might possibly manage to work up a small fit of sea-sickness if you rode a Heirie—the swiftest of the dromedaries—at his best pace; because at a pinch the Heirie can make ten miles an hour, shaking his unfortunate rider's joints loose, even enough he be swathed in many swaddlings. But neither Bob nor Tom is a Heirie. Tom is a fairly quick dromedary, but Bob, if he will pardon my saying so, is only an ordinary