"I do," said William. "The sort, and the _only_ sort. I'll grant that your beneficent person who does a lot of good to your humans may come in for a good large amount of praises, and also even get a small amount of solid rewards: but the fellow they really love is your Bully." "How can they love him? Impossible!" said James. "Then why do the confounded creatures act as though they did? You can only judge of their sanity by their acts--and those disprove it. Let's go on. What's my boy doing now?" "He is playing with a lot of little toy soldiers," said James. "He is knocking them over with toy cannon. Now he is constructing little toy towns, and setting fire to them." "And your boy?" "Is picking up the little soldiers, and trying to bend them straight and set them on their legs again." "Ah! Always throwing away your chances of winning that comet by wasting his time earning the gratitude of victims!" said the horrid William. "And now they have both left school, and are studying. My boy is practising sword-cuts, and reading about words of command, and linked battalions and machine-guns." [Illustration: "HE'S KNOCKING DOWN ALL THE OTHER BOYS LIKE NINEPINS."] "And my boy is practising tying bandages, and reading about arteries, and nerves, and compound fractures, and epidemics. My boy is fitting himself as a Healer." "And my boy," said William, "is fitting himself for a Slayer." "You are either mad," said James, "or are indulging in a pastime which is not your _forte_--a jest. You cannot seriously imagine that these humans will actually prefer one who slays them!" "I _know_ they will--it just tallies with their queer ways. They profess to hold human life at the highest value! That's not humbug on their parts, mind you--they are under the delusion that they do so hold it. Life is to them an object of joy, and the absence of it one of regret; as I told you once before, they delight in the filling up of the waste places of their ball with human life. They don't consider animal life as life. "If an island is full of intelligent elephants, who hardly ever make mistakes, and quiet, domesticated kangaroos, and contented rabbits, these humans of yours say: 'What a pity it isn't inhabited--we ought to people that desert!' They don't recognise the fact that it _is_ inhabited and _isn't_ a desert! They are delighted at the growing crowds in their towns; and if they look down a lane and don't see anyone in it, they drop a tear and think: 'It's very sad there should be no human life in that lane.'