"fokth or a dog or thomething" did it. He pointed out that the incubator
had not been cleaned.

"That it _asn't_, Sir," said Mrs. Skinner with her arms folded, smiling
coyly behind her nose. "We don't seem to have had time to clean it not
since we been 'ere...."

He went upstairs to see some rat-holes that Skinner said would justify a
trap--they certainly were enormous--and discovered that the room in
which the Food of the Gods was mixed with meal and bran was in a quite
disgraceful order. The Skinners were the sort of people who find a use
for cracked saucers and old cans and pickle jars and mustard boxes, and
the place was littered with these. In one corner a great pile of apples
that Skinner had saved was decaying, and from a nail in the sloping part
of the ceiling hung several rabbit skins, upon which he proposed to test
his gift as a furrier. ("There ithn't mutth about furth and thingth that
_I_ don't know," said Skinner.)

Mr. Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder, but he
made no unnecessary fuss, and even when he found a wasp regaling itself
in a gallipot half full of Herakleophorbia IV, he simply remarked mildly
that his substance was better sealed from the damp than exposed to the
air in that manner.

And he turned from these things at once to remark--what had been for
some time in his mind--"I _think_, Skinner--you know, I shall kill one
of these chicks--as a specimen. I think we will kill it this afternoon,
and I will take it back with me to London."

He pretended to peer into another gallipot and then took off his