‘Not a bit. It is always frisky and troublesome, and I never knew it get a bit better as it grew older.’ Winifred laughed outright. Mr. Kendal’s lips were parted by his smile. ‘I wonder what sort of a mother it would make?’ said the showman. ‘All animals are good mothers, of course.’ ‘I meant, is it a good disciplinarian?’ ‘If you mean cuffing its young one for playing exactly the same tricks as itself.’ ‘Exactly; and what would be the effect of letting it and its young one loose in a great scholar’s study?’ ‘There wouldn’t be much study left.’ ‘And would it be for his good?’ ‘Really, Mr. Showman, you ask very odd questions. Shall we try?’ said Albinia, with a skip backward, so as to lay her hand on the shoulder of her own great scholar, while the showman drew back the curtain, observing--‘I wish, ma’am, I could show “it and its young one” together, but the young specimen is unfortunately asleep. Behold the original black spider monkey!’ There stood the monkey, with sunny brown locks round the laughing glowing face, and one white paw still lying on the scholar’s shoulder--while his face made no assurance needful that it was very good for him! The mirror concealed behind the curtains was the menagerie! Albinia clapped her hands with delight, and pronounced it the most perfect of games. ‘And now let us have Willie,’ said Mrs. Ferrars; ‘it will conduce to the harmony of the next room.’ Willie, already initiated, hoped to puzzle papa as a platypus ornithoryncus, but was driven to allow that it was a nondescript animal, neither fish, flesh, nor good red-herring, useless, and very fond of grubbing in the mud; and if it were not at Botany Bay, it ought to be! The laughter that hailed his defence of its nose as ‘well, nothing particular,’ precipitated the drawing up of the curtain and his apparition in the glass: and then Nora Nugent being called, the inseparable Mary accompanied her, arm-in-arm, simpering an announcement that they liked nothing so well as a pair of dear little love-birds. Oh, unpitying papa! to draw from the unsuspicious Nora the admission that they were very dull little birds, of no shape at all, who always sat hunched up in a corner without any fun, and people said their love was all stupidity and pretence; in fact, if she had one she should call it Silly Polly or Polly Silly!