truffle of a nose works up and down and makes another wrinkle
in your irregular mug.

TOBY-DOG

She always says, "his square muzzle, his wrinkled truffle," so tenderly
and so lovingly!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

... And you think of nothing but eating.

TOBY-DOG

It's _your_ empty stomach that scolds and complains and wants to quarrel
with me.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I've a charming stomach.

TOBY-DOG

But no, it's your nose that's charming. You just said so.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

My stomach too. There's none more fastidious, more whimsical, stronger
and at the same time more delicate. It digests the bones of sole, but
meat that's the least bit tainted literally turns it.

TOBY-DOG

Literally's the word. You have _active_ indigestion.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

Yes, the whole house is affected by it. From the very first qualms I'm
in terrible distress; the earth gives way under me, my eyes dilate, I
hurriedly swallow quantities of salty saliva; involuntary, ventriloquial
cries escape me, my sides bulge out--

TOBY-DOG, (_disgusted_)

I say, if it's all the same to you, tell me the rest after dinner.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I'm hungry. Where can He be?

TOBY-DOG

He's there, in his study, scratching paper.

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He's always doing that. It's a game. Two-Paws play at the same thing for
hours and hours. I've often tried to scratch paper gently, as He does,
but the pleasure doesn't last long. I prefer newspapers torn into shreds
that rustle and fly ... There is a little pot of dark-violet, muddy
water on his table. I never sniff it without horror, since the day a
rather foolish curiosity made me dip my paw into it. This very paw, so
strong and aristocratic, (the tufts of useless hair you see between my
toes proclaim the purity of my race) this very paw bore a bluish stain
for eight days and the degrading odor of rusty steel clung to it a long
time after ...

TOBY-DOG

What's the little pot for?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

He drinks from it doubtless.

(_Silence_.)

TOBY-DOG

She's not back yet! Heaven grant She isn't lost, as I was one day in the
streets of Paris!

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I'm hungry!

TOBY-DOG

I'm hungry! What are we going to eat this evening?

KIKI-THE-DEMURE

I saw a chicken. It made a silly noise and dropped red blood on the
kitchen floor, soiling it far more than I ever did, or you either--yet
no one whipped it. But Emily put it in the fire, to teach it a lesson. I
licked up some of t