Shoot a monkey? If it is a mother-monkey, and the baby that clings between her shoulders is a little one, you cannot even throw a stone at her. I wonder if it is good for us to live among them like this. I wonder whether the constant spectacle of his original, glorious freedom may not produce a tendency to revert to his original habits even in a brass hat. It is a futile speculation, but there is a thrill in it. One would know him of course, by the hat, and the bit of red tape hanging to his collar.... What would you do about it--about this plague, if it plagued you? And does it not mark, like a picture in a book of travels, the distance that lies between us, that I should thus complain to you, not of sparrows or foxes or rats or rabbits or any of the ordinary pests of civilization, but of being overrun--simply overrun--by monkeys! CHAPTER VIII This is going to be a day of roses, a grand opening day. They have been getting ready for weeks; every morning there has been a show of pink promises, half kept, white hints and creamy suggestions, and here and there a sweet full-blown advertisement; but so much has been suddenly done that I think the bushes must have sat up all night to enable the garden definitely to make this morning its chief summer announcement--the roses are out. The shelf holds a great many roses, its widest part indeed, where the house stands, is quite taken up by a large bed of them which was meant to be oval, and only is not because no design in this country can ever be described by even an approximately exact term. That is at the side of the house; the drive runs past it. There is another bed, an attempted oblong, between the front door and the precipice by way of being devoted to them, and beside that they have made room for themselves in all the borders where there may or may not be accommodation for other people; and they climb, as well, over every window that looks out into the garden.