, please. It's about the beasts--my beasts what you gived me.
Winocewus, an' Lion, an' Tawantula, an' Tsetse, an' Black Bee--just like
a weal Bee, only not so sharp at ve end.... Don't you wemember, Mister
Colonel?"

"Of course I remember. The toy beasts I brought down from Rhodesia and
gave to a little boy."

"I was the boy. And--you saided I was to let Berta have her share wof dem.
And I did let her play wif all ve ovvers. But Winocewus had to be tooked
such care wof for fear of bweaking his horn--an' Berta was such a little
fing, vat--vat----"

"That you wouldn't let her play with Rhinoceros. And you think it wasn't
quite fair, or quite kind, and now you're sorry?"

Hammy sniffed dolorously, and two large tears splashed down.

"I'm sowwy. An' I fought if I was deaded too, like Berta, I could go an'
tell her I never meaned to be gweedy. An' I wouldn't eat my bweakfust, nor
my dinner, nor nothing--and at last my tummy shut, and I didn't want
nuffing more."

The Mother-Superior and the Colonel Commanding exchanged a glance over the
little round head before the man's voice answered the child.

"That wouldn't have made Bertha happy. She might have thought you a little
coward for running away and leaving your mother and all the other ladies
behind, shut up in Gueldersdorp. For an officer and a gentleman must go on
living and fighting while he has anything left to fight for, Hammy.
Remember that."

"Yes, Mister Colonel...." The drowsy eyes closed, the little head nodded
off into slumber against the kind, strong shoulder. The Mother-Superior
wheeled the perambulator near, and the Colonel, rising, laid the now
soundly-sleeping boy back upon his cushions.

"What mysteries children are!" he said, as the Mother replaced the light
covering, screening the sleeping face with tender, careful hands from sun
and flies. "Imagine remorse for an act of selfishness leading a boy of six
to such a determination--and a normal, healthy boy, if ever I met one."

"He has been living for some time under abnormal conditions," the Mother
said softly, looking at the quiet rise and fall of the light shawl
covering. "He will take a turn for the better now."

"And forget his trouble and its cause." The Chief's observant glance had
lighted on Rhinoceros, lying upside down in a little clump of flowering
sword-grass, into which he had been whisked as the Mother shook out the
little shawl. "I think," he said, and pocketed the horned one, "that