Page:The golden age.djvu/45

A HOLIDAY dominating her thoughts until it was sucked dry and cast aside,—'What would you do if you saw two lions in the road, one on each side, and you didn't know if they was loose or if they was chained up? '

'Do?' shouted Edward valiantly, 'I should—I should—I should—' His boastful accents died away into a mumble: 'Dunno what I should do.'

'Shouldn't do anything,' I observed after consideration; and, really, it would be difficult to arrive at a wiser conclusion.

'If it came to doing,' remarked Harold reflectively, 'the lions would do all the doing there was to do, wouldn't they?'

'But if they was good lions,' rejoined Charlotte, 'they would do as they would be done by.'

'Ah, but how are you to know a good lion from a bad one?' said Edward. 'The books don't tell you at all, and the lions ain't marked any different.'

'Why, there aren't any good lions,' said Harold hastily.

'O yes, there are, heaps and heaps,' 17