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The Wey, that Taffy called Wagai,
Was more than six times bigger then;
And all the Tribe of Tegumai
They cut a noble figure then!




HOW THE ALPHABET WAS MADE

THE week after Taffimai Metallumai (we will still call her Taffy,
Best Beloved) made that little mistake about her Daddy's spear
and the Stranger-man and the picture-letter and all, she went
carp-fishing again with her Daddy. Her Mummy wanted her to stay
at home and help hang up hides to dry on the big drying-poles
outside their Neolithic Cave, but Taffy slipped away down to her
Daddy quite early, and they fished. Presently she began to
giggle, and her Daddy said, 'Don't be silly, child.'

'But wasn't it inciting!' said Taffy. 'Don't you remember how the
Head Chief puffed out his cheeks, and how funny the nice
Stranger-man looked with the mud in his hair?'

'Well do I,' said Tegumai. 'I had to pay two deerskins--soft ones
with fringes--to the Stranger-man for the things we did to him.'

'We didn't do anything,' said Taffy. 'It was Mummy and the other
Neolithic ladies--and the mud.'

'We won't talk about that,' said her Daddy, 'Let's have lunch.'

Taffy took a marrow-bone and sat mousy-quiet for ten whole
minutes, while her Daddy scratched on pieces of birch-bark with a
shark's tooth. Then she said, 'Daddy, I've thinked of a secret
surprise. You make a noise--any sort of noise.'

'Ah!' said Tegumai. 'Will that do to begin with?'

'Yes,' said Taffy. 'You look just like a carp-fish with its mouth
open. Say it again, please.'

'Ah! ah! ah!' said her Daddy. 'Don't be rude, my daughter.'

'I'm not meaning rude, really and truly,' said Taffy. 'It's part
of my secret-surprise-think. Do say ah, Daddy, and keep your
mouth open at the end, and lend me that tooth. I'm going to draw
a carp-fish's mouth wide-open.'

'What for?' said her Daddy.

'Don't you see?' said Taffy, scratching away on the bark. 'That
will be our little secret s'prise. When I draw a carp-fish with
his mouth open in the smoke at the back of our Cave--if Mummy
doesn't mind--it will remind you of that ah-noise. Then we can
play that it was me jumped out of the dark and s'prised you with
that noise--same as I did in the beaver-swamp last winter.'

'Really?' said her Daddy, in the voice that grown-ups use when
they are truly attending. 'Go on, Taffy.'

'Oh bother!' she said. 'I can't draw all of a carp-fish, but I
can draw something that means a carp-fish's mouth. Don't you know
how they stand on their heads rooting in the mud? Well, here's a
pretence carp-fish (we can play that the rest of him is drawn).
Here's just his mouth, and that means ah.' And she drew this.
(1.)

'That's not bad,' said Tegumai, and scratched on his own piece of
bark for himself; but you've forgotten the feeler that hangs
across his mouth.'

'But I can't draw, Daddy.

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