Listen, Kiki. You must learn to act properly and to take life as it is. You can't stay there like that. We're going to change trains and a horrible guard will appear and say insulting things of you and your race. Besides you'd better obey, because if you don't, I--I'll give you a good whipping. (_But before she can lift her hand against his sacred fur, Kiki gets up, stretches himself, arches his back, yawns,--to show the rosy lining of his mouth, and then walks to the open basket where he lies down with an admirable air of quiet insolence. He and She exchange eloquent glances_.) DINNER IS LATE _A parlor, in the country, at the close of a long summer's day_. KIKI-THE-DEMURE _and_ TOBY-DOG _doze; ears twitching and eyelids obstinately shut. Now_ KIKI'S _lids part in a narrow slit, and disclose eyes the color of purple grapes. He yawns, with the ferocious expression of a small dragon._ KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_haughtily_) You're snoring! TOBY-DOG, (_who was not really asleep_) I'm not; it's you. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Impossible! I don't snore, I purr. TOBY-DOG Same thing. KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_not condescending to a discussion_) Thank heaven, it isn't! (_A silence_.) I'm hungry. One doesn't hear the noise of plates in the next room. Isn't it dinner time? TOBY-DOG, (_gets up, slowly stretches his forepaws and yawns, darting forth a heraldic tongue with curly end_) I don't know ... I'm hungry. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Where is She? How is it you're not at her heels? TOBY-DOG, (_embarrassed, nibbling his nails_) She's in the garden I believe, picking up plums. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Those yellow balls that rain about one's ears? I know them. You've seen her then? I bet She scolded you ... What have you been doing now? TOBY-DOG, (_self-conscious, turning away his wrinkled, toad-like face_) She told me to return to the house because--because I too, was eating plums. KIKI-THE-DEMURE She did well! You have depraved tastes--the tastes of men. TOBY-DOG, (_offended_) Say--no one ever sees me eating bad fish! And never, _never_ will I understand how you can go into such fits over a dead frog, or that herb. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Valerian. TOBY-DOG That's it, I guess ... An herb--is medicine, isn't it? KIKI-THE-DEMURE Medicine, indeed! Valerian ... but no _you_, can't understand ... I've seen Her laugh and go on, as I do over the valerian, after having emptied a glass of fetid wine that jumped dangerously too. As for the dead frog--so dead that it seems a bit of dry russia leather in the form of a frog--it's a sachet, impregnated with rare musk, with which I wish to scent my fur. TOBY-DOG Oh, you talk very well--but She always scolds and says that you smell bad after it, and He says the same thing. KIKI-THE-DEMURE