chael, my valet,
to let him see me from the private window, just glares at me over the
top of his newspaper and mutters, "Hah! my fine bird, you're coming off
your perch head-first before many months are over." And the newspaper
cameraman, who used to take my portrait whilst Michael fed me with
tit-bits--last week he caught me warming my spread wings in a little
patch of sunlight. "Just the stuff," he twittered, as he struggled with
his camera. "Great wheeze! Splendid snap for a full-page--'HIS PLACE IN
THE SUN.'" It wasn't my fault if I didn't spoil the photograph.

The very latest is a rumour that my right wing is likely to be crumpled
up. And the griffin vulture next door, who saw something of the
sanatorium when he swallowed a lighted cigar-end in mistake for a
glow-worm, hopes they'll give me chloroform. It's also whispered that
I'm moulting, but that, I _know_, isn't true.

Well, I suppose it must all end one day. As it is, I find myself looking
back longingly to the time when to the public I was just an eagle and a
king of birds. I can even remember with toleration the two simple souls
who once perched upon a garden-seat before my apartments. Said one,
"There y' are, M'ria. _There's_ one of them armerdillers young Bert was
tellin' us about." And the other replied: "Why, don't you know no more
nat'ral 'ist'ry than that, Elfrid? _That_ ain't a armadiller; that's a
'ummin'-bird!"

* * * * *

TOMMY BROWN, AUCTIONEER.

Tommy Brown knows all about India. You see his father served out there,
and that is how Tommy knows so much. He says that everybody in India has
to have a bath once a year in the Ganges, and that there is a delta at
the mouth of the Ganges as big as Ireland.

Tommy says it is very hot in the shade in India, but you needn't walk in
the shade unless you like. He showed me how an idol looked--it is like
when you come to the castor oil under the ginger wine.

But it is about the Indian troops that I want to tell you. Tommy was
very pleased when they came, because he knows all about them. He likes
the Gherkins best, he says, because they are so hardy. Tommy says the
Gherkins can hold their breath for five minutes without going red in the
face, and that's why they can fight so well.

He says they never want anything to eat, because they have a kind of a
twig that they chew, and then all they have to do is to keep tightening
their belts. Tommy gave me some of the twig th