o he said good-bye very politely to the Bi-Coloured-Python- Rock-Snake, and helped to coil him up on the rock again, and went on, a little warm, but not at all astonished, eating melons, and throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up, till he trod on what he thought was a log of wood at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees.

But it was really the Crocodile, O Best Beloved, and the Crocodile winked one eye – like this!

“‘Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child most politely, “but do you happen to have seen a Crocodile in these promiscuous parts?”

Then the Crocodile winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of the mud; and the Elephant’s Child stepped back most politely, because he did not wish to be spanked again.

“Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile. “Why do you ask such things?”

“‘Scuse me,” said the Elephant’s Child most politely, “But my father has spanked me, my mother has spanked me, not to mention my tall aunt, the Ostrich, and my tall uncle, the Giraffe, who can kick ever so hard, as well as my broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, and my hairy uncle, the Baboon, and including the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, with the scalesome, flailsome tail, just up the bank, who spanks harder than any of them; and so, if it’s quite all the same to you, I don’t want to be spanked any more.”

“Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile, “for I am the Crocodile,” and he wept crocodile tears to show it was quite true.

Then the Elephants’ child grew all breathless, and panted, and kneeled down on the bank and said, “You are the very person I have been looking for all these long days. Will you please tell me what you have for dinner?”

“Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile, “and I’ll whisper.”