I'm listening, but I can hardly follow what you say. It's so complicated--a bit over my head, you know. But you astonish me! Are they in the habit of hindering you in your changeful moods? You mew, and they open the door. You lie on the paper--the sacred paper He's scratching on--He moves away, marvelous condescension!--and leaves you his soiled page. You meander up and down his scratching table, obviously in quest of mischief, your nose wrinkled up, your tail giving quick little jerks back and forth like a pendulum. She watches you laughing, while He announces "the promenade of devastation." How then, can you accuse Them-- KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_insincere_) I don't accuse Them. After all, psychological subtleties are not in your line. TOBY-DOG Don't speak so fast. I need time to understand. It seems to me-- KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_slyly_) Pray, don't hurry! Your digestion might suffer in consequence. TOBY-DOG, (_unconscious of the irony_) You're right! I've some trouble in expressing myself to-day.--Well, here goes: it seems to me that of the two of us it's you they make the most of, and yet _you_ do all the grumbling. KIKI-THE-DEMURE A dog's logic, that! The more one gives the more I demand. TOBY-DOG That's wrong. It's indiscreet. KIKI-THE-DEMURE Not at all. I have a right to everything. TOBY-DOG To everything? And I? KIKI-THE-DEMURE I don't imagine you lack anything, do you? TOBY-DOG Ah, I don't know. Sometimes in my very happiest moments, I feel like crying. My eyes grow dim, my heart seems to choke me. I would like to be sure, in such times of anguish, that everybody loves me; that there is nowhere in the world a sad dog behind a closed door, that no evil will ever come.... KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_jeering_) And _then_ what dreadful thing happens? TOBY-DOG You know very well! Inevitably, at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it--Castor Oil! Wilful and unfeeling, she holds me between her strong knees, opens my jaws-- KIKI-THE-DEMURE Close them tighter! TOBY-DOG But I'm afraid of hurting her--and my tongue, horrified, tastes the slimy mawkish stuff. I choke and spit, my poor face is convulsed and the end of this torture is long in coming.... You've seen me afterwards dragging myself around, melancholy, my head hanging, listening to the unwholesome glouglou the oil makes in my stomach.... KIKI-THE-DEMURE Once when I was little She tried to give _me_ castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally--disappeared as if by magic. TOBY-DOG I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath. KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_interested_) You do? Tell me how it feels. It makes me shiver all over, just to see her putting you in the water.