very sorry for this. He rather
likes the gardener.

Denny wanted to put paper tails on the guinea-pigs, and it was no use
our telling him there was nothing to tie the paper on to. He thought we
were kidding until we showed him, and then he said, 'Well, never mind',
and got the girls to give him bits of the blue stuff left over from
their dressing-gowns.

'I'll make them sashes to tie round their little middles,' he said. And
he did, and the bows stuck up on the tops of their backs. One of the
guinea-pigs was never seen again, and the same with the tortoise when we
had done his shell with vermilion paint. He crawled away and returned no
more. Perhaps someone collected him and thought he was an expensive kind
unknown in these cold latitudes.

The lawn under the cedar was transformed into a dream of beauty,
what with the stuffed creatures and the paper-tailed things and the
waterfall. And Alice said--

'I wish the tigers did not look so flat.' For of course with pillows you
can only pretend it is a sleeping tiger getting ready to make a spring
out at you. It is difficult to prop up tiger-skins in a life-like manner
when there are no bones inside them, only pillows and sofa cushions.

'What about the beer-stands?' I said. And we got two out of the cellar.
With bolsters and string we fastened insides to the tigers--and they
were really fine. The legs of the beer-stands did for tigers' legs. It
was indeed the finishing touch.

Then we boys put on just our bathing drawers and vests--so as to be able
to play with the waterfall without hurting our clothes. I think this was
thoughtful. The girls only tucked up their frocks and took their shoes
and stockings off. H. O. painted his legs and his hands with Condy's
fluid--to make him brown, so that he might be Mowgli, although Oswald
was captain and had plainly said he was going to be Mowgli himself. Of
course the others weren't going to stand that. So Oswald said--

'Very well. Nobody asked you to brown yourself like that. But now you've
done it, you've simply got to go and be a beaver, and live in the dam
under the waterfall till it washes off.'

He said he didn't want to be beavers. And Noel said--

'Don't make him. Let him be the bronze statue in the palace gardens that
the fountain plays out of.'

So we let him have the hose and hold it up over his head. It made a
lovely fountain, only he remained brown. So then Dicky and Oswald and
I did ourselves brown too, and dr