Polly is the name of my pet bee, and Peter is my elephant. They are
very friendly, Polly often sits on Peter's ear but Peter never
sits on Polly's. They eat out of the same dish. Peter ate Polly by
mistake one day, but she stung him on the tongue and when he opened
his mouth to roar she flew out. Polly used to sleep in Peter's
trunk. One night he sneezed and Polly was lying a mile away next
morning.
In the summer time Polly lives in a wood house in the garden and it
is called a hive and that is where she keeps the honey. I take it
away when she is not looking and she thinks it is Peter that does
it, at least she kicks him for it. I have told her to watch for
Zeps. She sits on the roof all night watching, she is to sting the
Kaiser on the nose if he comes. She is an old maid. She had a lad
called Archibald, but father sat on him one night and then he swore
when he tried to sit down for weeks after. Archibald died.
Peter is a nice animal and he has a thousand teeth, but Polly only
has twenty. Peter looks like he has two tails he wags them both but
the front one is a trunk for eating. He is an awful big eater. He
says his prayers every night and I hope he will go to heaven when
he dies. He had pewmonia and Polly had pendisitis, and the doctor
made an operation and put in nineteen stitches. Peter works all
day, the road-roller man is at the war and Peter has to roll about
on the road to bruise the metal. He fills his trunk with water and
wets the road first. Polly tells him when the moters are coming.
"I don't see anything funny in that," said Macdonald.
"Possibly not," I said, "but Jim's idea of fun isn't the same as yours
or mine. A bairn laughs at ludicrous things: I'm sure Jim laughed when
he imagined the scene where his father sat on Archibald. The essay is
full of promise."
Macdonald handed me Alec Henry's book.
"That's a better essay," he said.