with some proper food in it, not mousey, I shall turn on the electric light.’

‘Fiddle-de-dee!’ said the tabby, and they all began singing

at the top of their voices.

David was getting vexed with them all, and he looked about for the electric light. But there were no switches by the door, as there ought to have been, but only a row of bottles which he knew came out of his father’s laboratory. But the stopper in one of them was loose, and a fizzing noise came out of it. He listened to it a minute, with his ear close to it, and heard it whispering, ‘It’s me! it’s me! it’s me!’

‘And when he’s got, it, he doesn’t know what to do with it!’ said the tabby contemptuously.

David hadn’t the slightest idea. He was only sure that the bottle had something to do with the electric light, and he took it up and began shaking it, as Nannie did to his medicine bottle. To his great delight, he saw that, as he shook it, the cats grew fainter and fainter, and the passage lighter and lighter.

The tabby spoke to him in a tremulous voice.

‘You’re shocking us frightfully,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t. You may have all the mouse-marmalade as soon as the cook comes back with her whiskers. She’s been gone a long time. And if you don’t like it, you really know where everything else is. There’s the garden outside, and then the lake, and then the village. It’s all just as usual, except that everything is real here. But whatever you do, don’t shock us any more.’

David shakes the bottle at the cats

The passage had grown quite bright by now, and there were only a few of the very strongest cats left. So, as he was a kind boy, he put down the bottle again, which began fizzing and whispering:

‘Pleased to have met you: pleased to have met you: pleased to have met you.’

‘I don’t know why you couldn’t have told me that at first,’ said David to the tabby.

‘Nor do I. It was my poor head. The dancing gets into it, and makes it turn round and square, one after the other. May we go on?’

The cats began to recover as he stopped shaking the bottle, and he walked on round the corner where the game cupboard stood against the wall. All the games were kept there, the Noah’s Ark, and the spillikins, and the Badminton, and the Happy Families, and the oak-bricks, and the lead soldiers; and, as usual, the door of it was slightly open, because, when all the games were put away, even Nannie could not shut it tight. To-night there was an extraordinary stir going on in it, everything was slipping about inside, and, as David paused to see what was happening, a couple of marbles rolled out. But, instead of stopping on the carpet, they continued rolling faster and faster, and he heard them hopping downstairs in the direction of the garden door.

‘I don’t want to play games just yet,’ he said to himself, ‘when there is so much to explore, but I must see what they are doing.’

He opened the door a little wider, and heard an encouraging voice, which he knew must be Noah’s, come from inside.

‘That’s right,’ it said; ‘now we can see what we’re doing. Is my ulster buttoned properly this time, missus? Last night, when you buttoned it for me, you did it wrong, you did, and I caught cold in my ankle, I did. It’s been sneezing all day, it has.’

‘I never saw such trouble as you men are,’ said Mrs. Noah. ‘Get up, you silly, and don’t sit on Shem’s hat. I’ve been looking for it everywhere.’

David stooped down and looked in. He had a sort of idea that he was invisible, and wouldn’t disturb anybody. There was the ark, with all its windows open, and the family were dressing. It consisted of two compartments, in the second of which lived the animals, one on the top of each other right up to the roof. There was no door in it, but the roof lifted off. At present it was tightly closed and latched, and confused noises of lions roaring and elephants trumpeting and cows mooing, dogs barking, and birds singing came from inside. Sometimes there was ordinary talk too, for the animals had all learned English from David as well as knowing their own animal tongue, and the Indian elephant spoke Hindustanee in addition. He was slim and light blue, and was known as the ‘Elegant Elephant,’ in contrast to a stout black one who never spoke at all. All this David thought that he and Nannie had made up, but now he knew that it was perfectly true. And he stood waiting to see what would happen next.

The hubbub increased.

‘If that great lamb would get off my chest,’ said the elegant elephant, ‘I should be able to get up. Why don’t they come and open the roof?’

‘Not time yet,’ said the cow. ‘The family are still dressing. But it’s a tight fit to-night. I’m glad the pin-partridge isn’t here scratching us all.’

‘Where’s it gone?’ said the elephant.

‘David took it to bed; more fool he,’ said the cow.

‘He couldn’t be much more of a fool than he is,’ grunted the pig. ‘He knows nothing about us really.’

At this moment David heard an irregular kind of hopping noise coming down the passage, and, just as he turned to look, the pin-partridge ran between his legs. It flew on to the roof of the ark, and began pecking at it.

‘Let me in,’ it shouted. ‘I believe it’s the first of September. What cads you fellows are not to let me in!’

‘You always think it’s the first of September,’ said the cow. ‘Now look at me; I’m milked every day, which must hurt me much more than being shot once.’

‘Not if it’s properly done,’ said the partridge. ‘I know lots of cows who like it.’

‘But it’s improperly done,’ said the cow. ‘David knows less about milking than anybody since the flood. You wait till I catch him alone, and see if I can’t teach him something about tossing.’

This sounded a very awful threat, and David, who knew that it was best to take cows as well as bulls by the horns, determined on a bold policy.

‘If I hear one word more about tossing, I shan’t let any of you out,’ he said.

There was dead silence.

‘Who’s that?’ said the cow in a trembling voice, for she was a coward as well as a cow.

‘It’s me!’ said David.

There was a confused whispering within.

‘We can’t stop here all night.’

‘Say you won’t toss him.’

‘You can’t anyhow, because your horns are both broken.’

‘Less noise in there,’ said Noah suddenly, from the next compartment.

The cow began whimpering.

‘I’m a poor old woman,’ she said, ‘and everybody’s very hard on me, considering the milk and butter I’ve given you.’

‘Chalk and water and margarine,’ said the pin-partridge, who had been listening with his ear to the roof. ‘Do