and along the edge of it many things flourished rankly. If you
crept through the undergrowth and crouched by the water's rim, it
was easy--if your imagination were in healthy working order--to
transport yourself in a trice to the heart of a tropical forest.
Overhead the monkeys chattered, parrots flashed from bough to
bough, strange large blossoms shone around you, and the push and
rustle of great beasts moving unseen thrilled you deliciously.
And if you lay down with your nose an inch or two from the water,
it was not long ere the old sense of proportion vanished clean
away. The glittering insects that darted to and fro on its
surface became sea-monsters dire, the gnats that hung above them
swelled to albatrosses, and the pond itself stretched out into a
vast inland sea, whereon a navy might ride secure, and whence
at any moment the hairy scalp of a sea serpent might be seen to
emerge.

It is impossible, however, to play at tropical forests properly,
when homely accents of the human voice intrude; and all my hopes
of seeing a tiger seized by a crocodile while drinking (vide
picture-books, passim) vanished abruptly, and earth resumed her
old dimensions, when the sound of Charlotte's prattle somewhere
hard by broke in on my primeval seclusion. Looking out from the
bushes, I saw her trotting towards an open space of lawn the
other side the pond, chattering to herself in her accustomed
fashion, a doll tucked under either arm, and her brow knit with
care. Propping up her double burden against a friendly stump,
she sat down in front of them, as full of worry and anxiety as a
Chancellor on a Budget night.

Her victims, who stared resignedly in front of them, were