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and looked like a waterproof. He said nothing whatever about the
Parsee's cake, because he had eaten it all; and he never had any
manners, then, since, or henceforward. He waddled straight into
the water and blew bubbles through his nose, leaving his skin on
the beach.

Presently the Parsee came by and found the skin, and he smiled
one smile that ran all round his face two times. Then he danced
three times round the skin and rubbed his hands. Then he went
to his camp and filled his hat with cake-crumbs, for the Parsee
never ate anything but cake, and never swept out his camp. He
took that skin, and he shook that skin, and he scrubbed that
skin, and he rubbed that skin just as full of old, dry, stale,
tickly cake-crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could
possibly hold. Then he climbed to the top of his palm-tree and
waited for the Rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on.

And the Rhinoceros did. He buttoned it up with the three buttons,
and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed. Then he wanted to
scratch, but that made it worse; and then he lay down on the
sands and rolled and rolled and rolled, and every time he rolled
the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse. Then he
ran to the palm-tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself
against it. He rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his
skin into a great fold over his shoulders, and another fold
underneath, where the buttons used to be (but he rubbed the
buttons off), and he rubbed some more folds over his legs. And
it spoiled his temper, but it didn't make the least difference to
the cake-crumbs. They were inside his skin and they tickled. So
he went home, very angry indeed and horribly scratchy; and from
that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and
a very bad temper, all on account of the cake-crumbs inside.

But the Parsee came down from his palm-tree, wearing his hat,
from which the rays of the sun were reflected in
more-than-oriental splendour, packed up his cooking-stove, and
went away in the direction of Orotavo, Amygdala, the Upland
Meadows of Anantarivo, and the Marshes of Sonaput.


THIS Uninhabited Island
Is off Cape Gardafui,
By the Beaches of Socotra
And the Pink Arabian Sea:
But it's hot--too hot from Suez
For the likes of you and me
Ever to go
In a P. and 0.
And call on the Cake-Parsee!




HOW THE LEOPARD GOT HIS SPOTS

IN the days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the
Leopard lived in a place called the High Veldt. 'Member it
wasn't the Low Veldt, or the Bush Veldt, or the Sour Veldt, but
the 'sclusively bare, hot, shiny High Veldt, where there was sand
and sandy-coloured rock and 'sclusively tufts of sandy-
yellowish grass. The Giraffe and the Zebra and the Eland and
the Koodoo and the Hartebeest lived there; and they were

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