grown-up.)
And Baviaan winked. _He_ knew.
Then said Baviaan, 'The game has gone into other spots; and my advice to
you, Leopard, is to go into other spots as soon as you can.'
And the Ethiopian said, 'That is all very fine, but I wish to know
whither the aboriginal Fauna has migrated.'
Then said Baviaan, 'The aboriginal Fauna has joined the aboriginal Flora
because it was high time for a change; and my advice to you, Ethiopian,
is to change as soon as you can.'
That puzzled the Leopard and the Ethiopian, but they set off to look
for the aboriginal Flora, and presently, after ever so many days, they
saw a great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks all 'sclusively
speckled and sprottled and spottled, dotted and splashed and slashed and
hatched and cross-hatched with shadows. (Say that quickly aloud, and you
will see how _very_ shadowy the forest must have been.)
'What is this,' said the Leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively dark, and yet
so full of little pieces of light?'
'I don't know,' said the Ethiopian, 'but it ought to be the aboriginal
Flora. I can smell Giraffe, and I can hear Giraffe, but I can't see
Giraffe.'
'That's curious,' said the Leopard. 'I suppose it is because we have
just come in out of the sunshine. I can smell Zebra, and I can hear
Zebra, but I can't see Zebra.'
'Wait a bit,' said the Ethiopian. 'It's a long time since we've hunted
'em. Perhaps we've forgotten what they were like.'
'Fiddle!' said the Leopard. 'I remember them perfectly on the High
Veldt, especially their marrow-bones. Giraffe is about seventeen feet
high, of a 'sclusively fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel; and
Zebra is about four and a half feet high, of a 'sclusively grey-fawn
colour from head to heel.'
'Umm,' said the Ethiopian, looking into the speckly-spickly shadows of
the aboriginal Flora-forest. 'Then they ought to show up in this dark
place like ripe bananas in a smoke-house.'
But they didn't. The Leopard and the Ethiopian hunted all day; and
though they could smell them and hear them, they never saw one of them.
'For goodness' sake,' said the Leopard at tea-time, 'let us wait till it
gets dark. This daylight hunting is a perfect scandal.'
So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard something breathing
sniffily in the starlight that fell all stripy through the branches, and
he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra,
and when he knocked it down it kicked
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