ndred; now it really was time for a drink, and then to bed. He rose
stiffly and went out to the kitchen, pouring the whisky and bringing it in
to the table desk, where he sat down and got out his diary. He was almost
finished with the day's entry when the little door behind him opened and a
small voice said, "Yeeek." He turned quickly.

"Little Fuzzy?"

The small sound was repeated, impatiently. Little Fuzzy was holding the
door open, and there was an answer from outside. Then another Fuzzy came
in, and another; four of them, one carrying a tiny, squirming ball of
white fur in her arms. They all had prawn-killers like the one in the
drawer, and they stopped just inside the room and gaped about them in
bewilderment. Then, laying down his weapon, Little Fuzzy ran to him;
stooping from the chair, he caught him and then sat down on the floor with
him.

"So that's why you ran off and worried Pappy Jack? You wanted your family
here, too!"

The others piled the things they were carrying with Little Fuzzy's steel
weapon and approached hesitantly. He talked to them, and so did Little
Fuzzy--at least it sounded like that--and finally one came over and
fingered his shirt, and then reached up and pulled his mustache. Soon all
of them were climbing onto him, even the female with the baby. It was
small enough to sit on his palm, but in a minute it had climbed to his
shoulder, and then it was sitting on his head.

"You people want dinner?" he asked.

Little Fuzzy yeeked emphatically; that was a word he recognized. He took
them all into the kitchen and tried them on cold roast veldbeest and
yummiyams and fried pool-ball fruit; while they were eating from a couple
of big pans, he went back to the living room to examine the things they
had brought with them. Two of the prawn-killers were wood, like the one
Little Fuzzy had discarded in the shed. A third was of horn, beautifully
polished, and the fourth looked as though it had been made from the
shoulder bone of something like a zebralope. Then there was a small _coup
de poing_ ax, rather low paleolithic, and a chipped implement of flint the
shape of a slice of orange and about five inches along the straight edge.
For a hand the size of his own, he would have called it a scraper. He
puzzled over it for a while, noticed that the edge was serrated, and
decided that it was a saw. And there were three very good flake knives,
and some shells, evidently drinking vessels.

Mamma Fuzzy ca