."

Shrieks of laughter and a welcome rest for Daddy, who turned to his
paper.

"Daddy!"

He put down his paper with an air of conscious virtue and lit his pipe.

"Well, dear?"

"What's the biggest snake you ever saw?"

"Oh, bother the snakes! I am tired of them."

But the children were never tired of them. Heredity again, for the snake
was the worst enemy of arboreal man.

"Daddy made soup out of a snake," said Laddie. "Tell us about that
snake, Daddy."

Children like a story best the fourth or fifth time, so it is never any
use to tell them that they know all about it. The story which they can
check and correct is their favourite.

"Well, dear, we got a viper and we killed it. Then we wanted the
skeleton to keep and we didn't know how to get it. At first we thought
we would bury it, but that seemed too slow. Then I had the idea to boil
all the viper's flesh off its bones, and I got an old meat-tin and we put
the viper and some water into it and put it above the fire."

"You hung it on a hook, Daddy."

"Yes, we hung it on the hook that they put the porridge pot on in
Scotland. Then just as it was turning brown in came the farmer's wife,
and ran up to see what we were cooking. When she saw the viper she
thought we were going to eat it. 'Oh, you dirty divils!' she cried, and
caught up the tin in her apron and threw it out of the window."

Fresh shrieks of laughter from the children, and Dimples repeated "You
dirty divil!" until Daddy had to clump him playfully on the head.

"Tell us some more about snakes," cried Laddie. "Did you ever see a
really dreadful snake?"

"One that would turn you black and dead you in five minutes?" said
Dimples. It was always the most awful thing that appealed to Dimples.

"Yes, I have seen some beastly creatures. Once in the Sudan I was dozing
on the sand when I opened my eyes and there was a horrid creature like a
big slug with horns, short and thick, about a foot long, moving away in
front of me."

"What was it, Daddy?" Six eager eyes were turned up to him.

"It was a death-adder. I expect that would dead you in five minutes,
Dimples, if it got a bite at you."

"Did you kill it?"

"No; it was gone before I could get to it."

"Which is the horridest, Daddy--a snake or a shark?"

"I'm not very fond of either!"

"Did you ever see a man eaten by sharks?"

"No, dear, but I was not so far off being eaten myself."

"Oo!" from all three of them.

"I