Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/252

 all, I'm sure," and gets away from Tom to bask in the magnificent patronage of Bob the Bactrian and the lady next door.

Cantankerous and uncertain as is the character of the camel, there is a deal of human nature about him.

When he has packed into his character all the possible devil, and ostrich, and orphan, there is still room for much human cussedness, and it is there.

You shall see it even in his very face. There is a world of expression in a camel's face, misleading often to stranger, but with a human deceit.

The face lends itself particularly to varied and strongly marked expression. The nostrils will open and close with a great flexibility, and the lips and eyebrows are more loose and mobile still. What more the machinery may camel want for the facial expression of his ill qualities? With such a lip and nose he can sneer as never can human thing; this at the humble person who brings him no biscuit. He can guffaw coarsely—and with no sound beyond a rare grunt. Furious malice is native to his face, and a self-sufficient conceit and superciliousness comes with full feeding. Even in his least expressive slumber the camel is smugly complacent, although his inborn genius cannot teach him that a piece of cardboard is not a biscuit.