dragged out, with his useless paws standing up stiff and imploring.
As it was, he was given to Denis, our pig, which, without a single
scruple of delicacy, ate him up as thoroughly as he ate up the
lettuce.

This business of eating, it appears, must go on all through creation.
We eat ducks, turkeys, and chickens, though we don't swallow them
whole, feathers and all. Our four-footed friends, less civilized,
take things with more directness and simplicity, and chew each other
up without ceremony, or swallow each other alive. Of these
unceremonious habits we had other instances.

Our house had a central court on the southern side, into which looked
the library, dining-room, and front hall, as well as several of the
upper chambers. It was designed to be closed in with glass, to serve
as a conservatory in winter; and meanwhile we had filled it with
splendid plumy ferns, taken up out of the neighbouring wood. In the
centre was a fountain surrounded by stones, shells, mosses, and
various water-plants. We had bought three little goldfish to swim in
our basin; and the spray of it, as it rose in the air and rippled
back into the water, was the pleasantest possible sound of a hot day.
We used to lie on the sofa in the hall, and look into the court, and
fancy we saw some scene of fairy-land, and water-sprites coming up
from the fountain. Suddenly a new-comer presented himself,--no other
than an immense bull-frog, that had hopped up from the neighbouring
river, apparently with a view to making a permanent settlement in and
about our fountain. He was to be seen, often for hours, sitting
reflectively on the edge of it, beneath the broad shadow of the
calla-leaves. When sometimes missed thence, he would be found under
the ample shield of a great bignonia, whose striped leaves grew hard