of, and if he thinks at all, wonderin’ where
he is to get his breakfast from. Or maybe he’s
got down some area and is in a coal cellar. My
eye, won’t some cook get a rum start when she
sees his green eyes a-shinin’ at her out of
the dark! If he can’t get food he’s
bound to look for it, and mayhap he may chance to
light on a butcher’s shop in time. If
he doesn’t, and some nursemaid goes out walkin’
or orf with a soldier, leavin’ of the hinfant
in the perambulator—well, then I shouldn’t
be surprised if the census is one babby the less.
That’s all.”
I was handing him the half-sovereign, when something
came bobbing up against the window, and Mr. Bilder’s
face doubled its natural length with surprise.
“God bless me!” he said. “If
there ain’t old Bersicker come back by ’isself!”
He went to the door and opened it, a most unnecessary
proceeding it seemed to me. I have always thought
that a wild animal never looks so well as when some
obstacle of pronounced durability is between us.
A personal experience has intensified rather than
diminished that idea.
After all, however, there is nothing like custom,
for neither Bilder nor his wife thought any more of
the wolf than I should of a dog. The animal itself
was a peaceful and well-behaved as that father of
all picture-wolves, Red Riding Hood’s quondam
friend, whilst moving her confidence in masquerade.
The whole scene was a unutterable mixture of comedy
and pathos. The wicked wolf that for a half
a day had paralyzed London and set all the children
in town shivering in their shoes, was there in a sort
of penitent mood, and was received and petted like
a sort of vulpine prodigal son. Old Bilder examined
him all over with most tender solicitude, and when
he had finished with his penitent said,
“There, I knew the poor old chap would get into
some kind of trouble. Didn’t I say it
all along? Here’s his head all cut and
full of broken glass. ‘E’s been a-gettin’
over some bloomin’ wall or other. It’s
a shyme that people are allowed to top their walls
with broken bottles. This ’ere’s
what comes of it. Come along, Bersicker.”
He took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with
a piece of meat that satisfied, in quantity at any
rate, the elementary conditions of the fatted calf,
and went off to report.
I came off too, to report the only exclusive information
that is given today regarding the strange escapade
at the Zoo.
17 September.—I was engaged after dinner
in my study posting up my books, which, through press
of other work and the many visits to Lucy, had fallen
sadly into arrear. Suddenly the door was burst
open, and in rushed my patient, with his face distorted
with passion. I was thunderstruck, for such
a thing as a patient getting of his own accord into
the Superintendent’s study is almost unknown.
