First it kicked
out with its bandy legs. Then it fisted its pudgy hands and yawned.
Then it puckered its wee red face in a manner most alarming and, to the
amazement of them all.... The Woman was so amazed that she nearly let
it drop. And yet what it did was perfectly natural; it opened its eyes,
like two blue patches of heaven, and blinked at them. Last of all it
emitted a thin, wailing sound that made everybody abominably unhappy.
The crocodile became so emotional that his tears froze in two long
icicles. After a pause the sound was repeated. All the animals rose on
their hind-legs and covered their ears with their paws.

The Woman stared at them apologetically. She was distressed and puzzled.
"Please don't cover your ears," she begged. "And don't think that I'm
hurting it. There's something that it's trying to tell us. It's said the
same thing before. It began saying it the moment I first found it. It's
gone on saying it, on and on.... There, there my little one, my
belovedest."

As if to corroborate her assertion that it had gone on and on, it
commenced to cry afresh. Out of politeness to the Woman, though the
sound hurt them, the tenderhearted animals uncovered their ears and
listened intently. This is what they heard, repeated over and over,
"Baa-aa-by! Baa-aa-by! Baa-aa-by!"

They were all shaking with sobbing when the elephant, in his coarsest
manner, lifted, up his trunk and snorted through it contemptuously.

"Stop snorting," the Man ordered impatiently. "There's no reason why you
should snort."

"Isn't there?" The elephant shuffled to his feet to depart. Before he
went, just to show his independence, again he snorted. Across his
shoulder he remarked. "And you think yourself so wise! You want to know
what to call it. Every time it speaks it tells you." It cried once more.
"There you are!" The elephant trumpeted triumphantly as he seated
himself at the top of the slide, having pulled his tail from under him
preparatory to tobogganning down the path. "Don't you hear what it says?
'Baa-aa-by! Baa-aa-by!' It couldn't be put more plainly. It's asking you
to call it baby."

As the elephant pushed off and vanished in a whirl of flying snow, the
Woman turned to the Man with a smile of gladness. "The clumsy fellow's
right. Weren't we the stupids? Fancy not understanding our own baby!"

IX

As you may imagine, all the beasts and birds went back to the jungle
very discontented. They didn't see why they