. Then she would put her arms
round my neck and pull herself up to my level and kiss me, and then
nestle down in my arms and pretend to sleep. By-and-by, when my
attention was called off her, she would pinch me, or tweak my necktie,
and make me look again at her wicked eye peeping out from under my
arm. I had to kiss her again, of course, and at last she might go to
sleep in earnest. She seemed able to sleep at any hour or in any
place, just like an animal.

"I had some difficulty in arranging for the night when once she had
made herself free of the house. She saw no reason whatever for our
being separated; but I circumvented her by nailing a strip of zinc all
round the door; and I put one round Florrie's too. I pretended to my
wife that it was to keep out draughts. Thumbeline was furious when she
found out how she had been tricked. I think she never quite forgave me
for it. Where she hid herself at night I am not sure. I think on the
sitting-room sofa; but on mild mornings I used to find her out-doors,
playing round Bran's kennel.

"Strap, our fox-terrier, picked up some rat poison towards the end of
April and died in the night. Thumbeline's way of taking that was very
curious. It shocked me a good deal. She had never been so friendly
with him as with Bran, though certainly more at ease in his company
than in mine. The night before he died I remember that she and Bran
and he had been having high games in the meadow, which had ended by
their all lying down together in a heap, Thumbeline's head on Bran's
flank, and her legs between his. Her arm had been round Strap's neck
in a most loving way. They made quite a picture for a Royal
Academician; 'Tired of Play,' or 'The End of a Romp,' I can fancy he
would call it. Next morning I found poor old Strap stiff and staring,
and Thumbeline and Bran at their games just the same. She actually
jumped over him and all about him as if he had been a lump of earth or
a stone. Just some such thing he was to her; she did not seem able to
realise that there was the cold body of her friend. Bran just sniffed
him over and left him, but Thumbeline showed no consciousness that he
was there at all. I wondered, was this heartlessness or obliquity? But
I have never found the answer to my question.[7]

[Footnote 7: I have observed this frequently for myself, and can
answer Beckwith's question for him. I would refer the reader in the
first place to my early experience of the boy (to call him so