This feeling was naturally intensified in regard to his immediate neighbours, the female Orang and the Chimpanzee. In their case he was indeed only making a slight return for the ill will they bore him, which seemed to increase with every day. Mr. Cromartie was really much to blame for an aggravation of their natural and, one may say, reasonable dislike of him. For not only did he draw a larger crowd than fell to their share, but he persistently ignored them, and so neglected ordinary civilities that he would have made himself exceedingly unpopular had his neighbours been human beings like himself. This was due to a singular defect of imagination in him rather than to natural want of manners, for in ordinary life he always showed himself perfectly well bred. If an excuse can be found for his conduct it is that he believed that the proper thing for him to do was to ignore the very existence of his neighbours, and also that Collins, his keeper, never set him right on this point. The fact is that Collins was never perfectly easy with Mr. Cromartie, and that he was the kind of man to take offence himself. Indeed, he was more jealous of the feelings of his old favourites, the two apes, than he was quite aware of. Besides this he had lost the Gibbon, which had been given to another keeper when Mr. Cromartie had come, and there is no hiding the fact that Collins would have liked to have the Gibbon back in Mr. Cromartie’s place. For one thing the ape had given him less work, and for another, it had never been at any time in its life his social superior. Besides that, Collins had, for we should do him justice, a very positive affection for the animal. One evening, after a day passed in a most desultory way, Mr. Cromartie was sitting in his cage sucking his pipe, when suddenly he saw Miss Lackett come into the empty house. This was the evening of the day after her troubled night. In the morning she had resolved to settle the question whether Cromartie were mad or not, to make a judgment on the subject that would be impartial and definitive, for she felt convinced that if she could not settle the question of his sanity one way or the other, there would be no doubt of her losing hers.