[Illustration: THE PUPPY'S AMAZEMENT.]
A tortoise has many virtues, as for instance, quietness, dignity, and
lack of ambition. But, as a rule, activity and courage are not credited
to the tortoise. This is a little anecdote of a tortoise who displayed
both, in so far as to encounter, single-handed, a terrible puppy more
than a fortnight old, and several inches high at the shoulder.
[Illustration: A MATCH.]
[Illustration: A DRAG.]
Though the tortoise's lack of ambition may be accepted as a general
principle, nevertheless it is relaxed in the ducal matter of strawberry
leaves. Every tortoise of the sort we keep about our houses and gardens
has an ambition for strawberry leaves--to eat. It may also be said as a
warning (having nothing to do with this anecdote) that the tortoise has
no ambition, or taste, for slugs or other garden pests. The man who
sells them most solemnly avers they have, but that is only his fancy;
the tortoise--at any rate, the tortoise he sells--is a vegetarian, as
well as a teetotaler and a non-smoker. But as to the strawberry leaves,
these are longed for by the tortoise even more than lettuce leaves.
Enthusiasm is not a distinguishing characteristic of the tortoise, but
when he _is_ enthusiastic it is over strawberry leaves. The tortoise of
our anecdote (he had no domestic name, such was his humility) had the
even tenor of his life disturbed by a sudden inroad of puppies, who made
things very busy about him. The puppies did not altogether understand
the tortoise, and the tortoise never wanted to understand the puppies.
But the puppies were playful and inquisitive. One morning, just as the
tortoise had laid hold of a very acceptable "runner" of strawberry
leaves, a puppy, looking for fun, seized the other end in his teeth and
pulled. Something had to go, and it was the strawberry leaf the tortoise
happened to be biting, close by his mouth. Off went the puppy, trailing
the "runner" after him, the tortoise toiling laboriously in the rear.
Presently the puppy, finding that speed was no accomplishment of the
tortoise, stopped at a corner and waited. Up came the tortoise, drums
beating and colours flying, metaphorically speaking, and actually
looking as threatening as a harmless tortoise can manage to look.
"Snap!" went the tortoise. The puppy was nonplussed. What was this
thing? Was it really angry? What would it do to him? His experience of
tortoises was small, and this one looked very threatening. Perhaps the
safest game was to drop the strawberry leaves, at any rate. So dropped
they were, and the puppy sat back in the corner, a trifle apprehensive
of what might happen next. But the strawberry leaves were all the
tortoise wanted, and those he snatched, and straightway squatted down
upon them. Then he ate them, little by little and bite by bite, at his
leisure, regarding the puppy defiantly the while. And the puppy carried
to all his brothers and sisters a terrible tale of the prowess of that
crawling monstrosity that ate leaves, and got formidably angry if you
snatched them away for fun.
[Illustration: A BOLT.]
[Illustration: A SNAP.]
[Illustration: A VICTORY.]
[Illustration: The Memory-Saver