the buttons
off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And it spoiled his
temper, but it didn't make the least difference to the cake-crumbs. They
were inside his skin and they tickled. So he went home, very angry
indeed and horribly scratchy; and from that day to this every rhinoceros
has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper, all on account of the
cake-crumbs inside.

But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat, from which
the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour,
packed up his cooking-stove, and went away in the direction of Orotavo,
Amygdala, the Upland Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.

[Illustration]

THIS Uninhabited Island
Is off Cape Gardafui,
By the Beaches of Socotra
And the Pink Arabian Sea:
But it's hot--too hot from Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go
In a P. and O.
And call on the Cake-Parsee!

[Illustration: How the Leopard Got His Spots]

HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard
lived in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt,
or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot,
shiny High Veldt, where there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and
'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra
and the Eland and the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they
were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish all over; but the Leopard, he was
the 'sclusivest sandiest-yellowish-brownest of them all--a
greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast, and he matched the
'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of the High Veldt to one
hair. This was very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and the rest of
them; for he would lie down by a 'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish
stone or clump of grass, and when the Giraffe or the Zebra or the Eland
or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the Bonte-Buck came by he would
surprise them out of their jumpsome lives. He would indeed! And, also,
there was an Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively
greyish-brownish-yellowish man he was then), who lived on the High Veldt
with the Leopard; and the two used to hunt together--the Ethiopian with
his bows and arrows, and the Leopard 'sclusively with his teeth and
claws--till the Giraffe and th