erly man. 'Good! An average boy. So much the better.
And what does it feel like to be a boy?'

'Whew!' said Chimp to himself, 'I came for breakfast, and all I seem to
be getting is an exam.' However, he did his best to answer the question.
'Why, sir,' he said aloud, 'as long as you don't get too many lines and
swishings, it feels good to be a boy. But swishing makes it feel bad
sometimes.'

'Lines?' inquired the other. 'Swishings? What are they?'

'Why,' said Chimp, 'when Porker canes you, that's swishing, and lines
are passages from Virgil which you have to copy out if you make
howlers--I mean, if you make mistakes.'

'Yes, yes,' said the elderly man, a little vaguely. 'And so it's good to
be a boy?' he added.

A happy thought struck Chimp. 'It is good,' he replied; 'but there are
other times when it's bad, besides those I mentioned. When--when you're
hungry, for instance.'

'Ah!' exclaimed the elderly man, rising from the table. 'I was
forgetting. You must pardon me, Alexander Joseph Chemmle. I have, I
fear, nothing to offer you but biscuits and tinned meats. Do you care
for tinned meats? I keep most kinds.'

'I like bloater paste,' Chimp said. 'I always take a pot or two back to
school.'

'Ah!' cried his host eagerly, 'you like bloater paste best? That's
famous! So do I. A community of taste!'

He disappeared into the cave, and in a minute or so came forth again,
bearing the bloater paste and a plate in one hand, and the biscuits and
a knife in the other. 'Now,' he said, 'fall to, and while you are eating
these I must try to find something else. Tinned pears--do you like
them?'

Chimp mumbled that he did. He was eating with more enjoyment than he
ever had eaten in his life. Ambrosia was nothing to bloater paste.

'It is wonderful--our tastes coincide in everything,' said the elderly
man as he entered the cave again. He returned with a tin of pears and
some marmalade, a jug of water and a glass. Then he sat on a camp stool
and observed his guest.

It was not until Chimp was well forward with the pears that his host
spoke again. 'I am sorry, Alexander Joseph Chemmle,' he said, 'to have
kept you waiting so long, for I take it that this is not your customary
appetite--that you were, in fact, unusually, if not painfully, hungry.
But I was so interested by the sight of a real boy that I could think of
nothing else. You see, I have never met with a boy before.'

Chimp opened his eyes as wide almost as his m