you seen such a thing as a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?'

'Have I seen a Crocodile?' said the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, in a voice of dretful scorn. 'What
will you ask me next?'

''Scuse me,' said the Elephant's Child, 'but could you kindly
tell me what he has for dinner?'

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake uncoiled himself very
quickly from the rock, and spanked the Elephant's Child with his
scalesome, flailsome tail.

'That is odd,' said the Elephant's Child, 'because my father and
my mother, and my uncle and my aunt, not to mention my other
aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my other uncle, the Baboon, have all
spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity--and I suppose this is the
same thing.

So he said good-bye very politely to the
Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, and helped to coil him up on the
rock again, and went on, a little warm, but not at all
astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because
he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was a
log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy
Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees.

But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the
Crocodile winked one eye--like this!