In her bonnet is, of course, an osprey aigrette; she knows it was torn from a living creature, but then that was done far away in some Asiatic or American creek or forest, and so really does not matter. Her Suède gloves fit like her skin; they were the skin of a kid, and were probably stripped from its living body as this lends suppleness to the skin. The jacket she carries on her arm is lined with Astrakhan fur, which was taken from an unborn lamb to give to the fur that curl and kink which please her; it has been cut from its mother's ripped-up womb. Her horses, as they wait for her at the corner of the street, have their heads fixed in air, and the muscles of their necks cramped by immovable bearing-reins. Her Japanese pug runs after her, shaking his muzzle-tortured nose. She has a telegram in her pocket which has momentarily vexed her. She sent her sable collie to the dog-exhibition at Brussels, and the excitement, or the crush, or the want of water, or something, has brought on heat apoplexy, and they wire that he is dead, poor old nervous Ossian! She really has no luck, for her Java sparrows died too at the bird show in Edinburgh, because the footman, sent with them, forgot to fill their water-glass when it got dry on the journey; a great many people send birds to shows with nobody at all to take care of them, so she feels that she was not to blame in the very least. 'Why will you show?' says her husband, who is vexed about Ossian; 'you don't want to win and you don't want to sell.' 'Oh, everybody does it,' she answers. He goes into his study to console himself with a new model of a pole trap; and she, her canvassing done, runs upstairs to see her gown for the May Drawing-Room. The train is of quite a new design, embroidered with orchids in natural colours, and fringed with the feathers of the small green parrakeet, a beautiful little bird which has been poisoned by hundreds in the jungles of New Guiana to make the border to this _manteau de cour_. If she were told that she is a more barbaric creature than the squaw of the poor Indian trapper who poisoned the parrakeets, she would be equally astonished and offended. Let us now look at her next-door neighbour; he is a very wealthy person and seldom refuses a subscription, thinks private charity pernicious and pauperising, attends his church regularly, and votes in the House of Commons in favour of pigeon-shooting and spurious sports. If anyone asks him if he 'likes animals' he answers cheerily, 'Oh, dear me, yes. Poor creatures, why not?' But it does not disturb him that the horse in the hansom cab, which he has called to take him to the City, has weals all over its loins, and a bit that fills its mouth with blood and foam; nor does he notice the over-driven and half-starved condition of a herd of cattle being taken from Cannon Street to Smithfield, but only curses them heartily for blocking the traffic.