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