I carried the momentous documents to the New Ape-House, not without trepidation and misgiving. They were, I could see, the death-warrant to Wiles as Barbara's keeper; and I felt resentment against fate for so brutally breaking this bond, apart altogether from other mischief which might ensue. It was not as if either Wiles or his wife had imagination or any breadth of view. They were the most ordinary, simple, faithful creatures, not in the least discontented with their lot, and not in the least fitted to receive a fortune. They were too good for it; they had done nothing to deserve such a chastisement. A hundred a year--that would have been sensible: a fund against illness, a security for old age, a sanction for certain little extras now; but two thousand a year was monstrous. Wiles was just showing out some impatient F.Z.S. when I arrived, and I watched the transfer of a shilling from hand to hand. Looking the F.Z.S. over, I doubted if he had more than £1800 a year, and smiled to myself. Wiles led me in, and for a time I did nothing but caress Barbara and feed her with grapes. Then I said, "Mr. Wiles, how would you like to be rich?" "Rich," he said. "How rich?" "Well, rich enough to spend as many days as you liked at Lord's or the Oval?" "But what about my apes?" he asked. "I mean so rich that you couldn't very well go on looking after them," I said. "I shouldn't like that," he replied. "But don't you ever want a holiday?" "Not more than a day or so. I can't trust my mate enough for more than that." "But surely if you had to leave the Zoo owing to a fortune you could get accustomed to it?" Wiles became suspicious. "May I ask who and what you're getting at?" he said. I handed him the letter. He read it and the will several times. "Well, I'm jiggered," he said at last. "Well, I'm jiggered." "Your wife asked me to bring it," I told him. "So I supposed," he said. "And she, what does she think of it all?" "She's jiggered too," I said. "Poor old girl," he said. "How much a year do you reckon it comes to?" he asked. "About two thousand pounds." He whistled. "And here have I been looking in a pawnbroker's window in Camden Town High Street for the past three months, wondering if I could treat myself to a meerschaum pipe he's got there, at twelve-and-six, to smoke on Sundays. I can have a bushel of them now, and there's no fun in it." I walked back by way of the sea-lions' enclosure to refresh my eyes with the King Penguin's perfect ecclesiastical tailoring. He was pacing moodily about as usual, in what one felt to be the interval between a marriage ceremony and a funeral service. Much better, I thought, to have left the £2000 a year to him. No harm would then be done, and what perfect episcopal garden-parties he could give with it!