c tongue with curly end_) I don't know ... I'm hungry.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Where is She? How is it you're not at her heels?

TOBY-DOG, (_embarrassed, nibbling his nails_)

She's in the garden I believe, picking up plums.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Those yellow balls that rain about one's ears? I know them. You've seen
her then? I bet She scolded you ... What have you been doing now?

TOBY-DOG, (_self-conscious, turning away his wrinkled, toad-like face_)

She told me to return to the house because--because I too, was eating
plums.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

She did well! You have depraved tastes--the tastes of men.

TOBY-DOG, (_offended_)

Say--no one ever sees me eating bad fish! And never, _never_ will I
understand how you can go into such fits over a dead frog, or that herb.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Valerian.

TOBY-DOG

That's it, I guess ... An herb--is medicine, isn't it?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Medicine, indeed! Valerian ... but no _you_, can't understand ... I've
seen Her laugh and go on, as I do over the valerian, after having
emptied a glass of fetid wine that jumped dangerously too. As for the
dead frog--so dead that it seems a bit of dry russia leather in the form
of a frog--it's a sachet, impregnated with rare musk, with which I wish
to scent my fur.

TOBY-DOG

Oh, you talk very well--but She always scolds and says that you smell
bad after it, and He says the same thing.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

They're nothing but Two-Paws, both of them. You, poor thing, belittle
yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear a
coat when it rains, eat plums--for shame!--and those big green balls,
the malicious trees let fall sometimes, when I'm passing underneath.

TOBY-DOG

Apples?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Very likely. She picks one up and throws it down the path, crying:
"Apple, Toby, apple," and you rush after, in unseemly fashion, gasping
for breath, looking like a fool, your tongue and your eyes sticking
out....

TOBY-DOG, (_scowling, head resting on his paws_)

One takes one's pleasures where one finds them.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_yawning, shows his pointed teeth and his palate of
pink velvet_)

I'm hungry. Dinner is surely late tonight. Suppose you look for Her?

TOBY-DOG

I daren't. She forbade it. She is down there in the hollow, with a big
basket. The dew is falling and wetting her feet and the sun's going
away. But you know how She is. She sits on the damp ground, looking
ahead of her, as if S