rst one paw and then another.

The stranger is more intelligent than Dinah. He says to himself, "I
know her sort well, the silly thing. Saw her ages ago in the Garden.
She wants mice and frogs and such things--takes the bread out of my
mouth. Native industry must be protected." so the stranger brings
his head round under the grass and waits for Dinah, who is watching
his tail. The tail moves a little and then a little more. Dinah
says, "It will be gone if I don't mind," and she jumps for it. At
that instant the snake strikes her on the nose with his fangs.
Dinah's fur rises on end with sudden fright, she shakes her head, and
the snake drops off. She turns away, and says, "This is frightful;
what a deceitful world! Life is not worth living." Her head feels
queer, and being sleepy she lies down, and is soon a dead cat.

That summer was very hot at Nyalong, one hundred and ten degrees in
the shade. Philip began to find his bed of stringy bark very hard,
and as it grew older it curled together so much that he could
scarcely turn in it from one side to the other. So he made a
mattress which he stuffed with straw, and he found it much softer
than the stringy bark. But after a while the mattress grew flat, and
the stuffing lumpy. Sometimes on hot days he took out his bed, and
after shaking it, he laid it down on the grass; his blankets he hung
on the fence for many reasons which he wanted to get rid of.

The water in the forty-acre to the south was all dried up. An old
black snake with a streak of orange along his ribs grew thirsty. His
last meal was a mouse, and he said, "That was a dry mouthful, and
wants something to wash it down." He knew his way to the water-hole
at the end of the garden, but he had to pass the hut, which when he
travelled that way the summer before was unoccupied. After creeping
under the bottom rail of the fence, he raised his head a little, and
looked round. He said, "I see there's another tenant here"--Bruin
was then alive and was sitting on the top of his stump eating gum
leaves--"I never saw that fellow so low down in the world before; I
wonder what he is doing here; been lagged, I suppose for something or
other. He is a stupid, anyway, and won't take any notice even if he
sees me."

Sam and Puss were both blinking their eyes in the shade of the
lightwood, and whisking the flies from their ears. Maggie was
walking about with beak open, showing her parched tongue; the heat
m