Taken in heaps of
people; they all read up Popple and think it's old Harry Nicholson's
ghost; we always stop them from writing to the papers about it, though.
That would be carrying matters too far."
Mrs. Hatch-Mallard renewed the lease in due course, but Ada Bleek has
never renewed her friendship.
THE MAPPINED LIFE
"These Mappin Terraces at the Zoological Gardens are a great improvement
on the old style of wild-beast cage," said Mrs. James Gurtleberry,
putting down an illustrated paper; "they give one the illusion of seeing
the animals in their natural surroundings. I wonder how much of the
illusion is passed on to the animals?"
"That would depend on the animal," said her niece; "a jungle-fowl, for
instance, would no doubt think its lawful jungle surroundings were
faithfully reproduced if you gave it a sufficiency of wives, a goodly
variety of seed food and ants' eggs, a commodious bank of loose earth to
dust itself in, a convenient roosting tree, and a rival or two to make
matters interesting. Of course there ought to be jungle-cats and birds
of prey and other agencies of sudden death to add to the illusion of
liberty, but the bird's own imagination is capable of inventing
those--look how a domestic fowl will squawk an alarm note if a rook or
wood pigeon passes over its run when it has chickens.
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