sed! Let's go
and find him.'

By and by they found Painted Jaguar, still nursing his paddy-paw that
had been hurt the night before. He was so astonished that he fell three
times backward over his own painted tail without stopping.

'Good morning!' said Stickly-Prickly. 'And how is your dear gracious
Mummy this morning?'

'She is quite well, thank you,' said Painted Jaguar; 'but you must
forgive me if I do not at this precise moment recall your name.'

'That's unkind of you,' said Stickly-Prickly, 'seeing that this time
yesterday you tried to scoop me out of my shell with your paw.'

'But you hadn't any shell. It was all prickles,' said Painted Jaguar. 'I
know it was. Just look at my paw!'

'You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,' said
Slow-Solid. 'Why are you so rude and forgetful to-day?'

'Don't you remember what your mother told you?' said Stickly-Prickly,--

'Can't curl, but can swim--
Stickly-Prickly, that's him!
Curls up, but can't swim--
Slow-Solid, that's him!'

Then they both curled themselves up and rolled round and round Painted
Jaguar till his eyes turned truly cart-wheels in his head.

Then he went to fetch his mother.

[Illustration: THIS is a picture of the whole story of the Jaguar and
the Hedgehog and the Tortoise _and_ the Armadillo all in a heap. It
looks rather the same any way you turn it. The Tortoise is in the
middle, learning how to bend, and that is why the shelly plates on his
back are so spread apart. He is standing on the Hedgehog, who is waiting
to learn how to swim. The Hedgehog is a Japanesy Hedgehog, because I
couldn't find our own Hedgehogs in the garden when I wanted to draw
them. (It was daytime, and they had gone to bed under the dahlias.)
Speckly Jaguar is looking over the edge, with his paddy-paw carefully
tied up by his mother, because he pricked himself scooping the Hedgehog.
He is much surprised to see what the Tortoise is doing, and his paw is
hurting him. The snouty thing with the little eye that Speckly Jaguar is
trying to climb over is the Armadillo that the Tortoise and the Hedgehog
are going to turn into when they have finished bending and swimming. It
is all a magic picture, and that is one of the reasons why I haven't
drawn the Jaguar's whiskers. The other reason was that he was so young
that his whiskers had not grown. The Jaguar's pet name with his Mummy
was Doffles.]

'Mother,' he said, 'there