than six times bigger then;
And all the Tribe of Tegumai
They cut a noble figure then!

[Illustration: How the Alphabet Was Made]

HOW THE ALPHABET WAS MADE

THE week after Taffimai Metallumai (we will still call her Taffy, Best
Beloved) made that little mistake about her Daddy's spear and the
Stranger-man and the picture-letter and all, she went carp-fishing again
with her Daddy. Her Mummy wanted her to stay at home and help hang up
hides to dry on the big drying-poles outside their Neolithic Cave, but
Taffy slipped away down to her Daddy quite early, and they fished.
Presently she began to giggle, and her Daddy said, 'Don't be silly,
child.'

'But wasn't it inciting!' said Taffy. 'Don't you remember how the Head
Chief puffed out his cheeks, and how funny the nice Stranger-man looked
with the mud in his hair?'

'Well do I,' said Tegumai. 'I had to pay two deerskins--soft ones with
fringes--to the Stranger-man for the things we did to him.'

'_We_ didn't do anything,' said Taffy. 'It was Mummy and the other
Neolithic ladies--and the mud.'

'We won't talk about that,' said her Daddy. 'Let's have lunch.'

Taffy took a marrow-bone and sat mousy-quiet for ten whole minutes,
while her Daddy scratched on pieces of birch-bark with a shark's tooth.
Then she said, 'Daddy, I've thinked of a secret surprise. You make a
noise--any sort of noise.'

'Ah!' said Tegumai. 'Will that do to begin with?'

'Yes,' said Taffy. 'You look just like a carp-fish with its mouth open.
Say it again, please.'

'Ah! ah! ah!' said her Daddy. 'Don't be rude, my daughter.'

'I'm not meaning rude, really and truly,' said Taffy. 'It's part of my
secret-surprise-think. _Do_ say _ah_, Daddy, and keep your mouth open at
the end, and lend me that tooth. I'm going to draw a carp-fish's mouth
wide-open.'

'What for?' said her Daddy.

'Don't you see?' said Taffy, scratching away on the bark. 'That will be
our little secret s'prise. When I draw a carp-fish with his mouth open
in the smoke at the back of our Cave--if Mummy doesn't mind--it will
remind you of that ah-noise. Then we can play that it was me jumped out
of the dark and s'prised you with that noise--same as I did in the
beaver-swamp last winter.'

'Really?' said her Daddy, in the voice that grown-ups use when they are
truly attending. 'Go on, Taffy.'

[Illustration: 1]

'Oh bother!' she said. 'I can't draw all of a carp-fish, but I can draw
something