MihaElla ’s Reviews > Beasts and Super-Beasts > Status Update

The uncared-for clothes, the aggressive, grizzled beard,& the furtive, evasive eye of the new-comer bespoke the professional cadger, the man who would undergo hours of humiliating tale-spinning & rebuff rather than adventure on half a day’s decent work.
For a while the new-comer fixed his eyes straight in front of him in a strenuous, unseeing gaze; then his voice broke out with the insinuating inflection…

“It’s all right about the proposal,” she announced; “he came out with it at the sixth hole.  I said I must have time to think it over.  I accepted him at the seventh.”

“My dear,” said her mother, “I think a little more maidenly reserve and hesitation would have been advisable, as you’ve known him so short a time.  You might have waited till the ninth hole.”

Là, à l’autre côté de la porte, est un cochon—

Un cochon? Ah, le petit charmant! exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm

Mais non, pas du tout petit, met pas du tout charmant; un bête féroce—

Une bête, corrected Matilda; a pig is masculine as long as you call it a pig, but if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious beast it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully unsexing language.

Pity you weren’t out;we had quite a good day.We found at once,in the pool just below your garden

Did you—kill? asked Amanda

Rather. A fine she-otter.Your husband got rather badly bitten in trying to ‘tail it.’Poor beast,I felt quite sorry for it, it had such a human look in its eyes when it was killed.You’ll call me silly,but do you know who the look reminded me of? My dear woman,what is the matter?