of their legs with scrupulous care — preening them- 

 selves with all the fastidiousness of our familiar 

 feathered friends . . . Even at this moment I 

 can see Little Lena at this very employment. I 

 approach her tank. No sooner am I half-way across 

 the room than she detects my approach and 

 straightway makes for the surface by the route she 

 has learned so well during these past eighteen 

 months of almost daily traversing — by the way of 

 the sea-fan rising to the top of the aquarium. Is it 

 because of hunger that she climbs to greet me? I 

 doubt it; she has been well fed but a couple of 

 hours before. At any rate, I will learn. I offer her 

 a tidbit in the form of a flounder's gut, which she 

 immediately rejects as she does all other morsels 

 offered to her in turn, flinging them far from her 

 with a flip of her arm. 



We understand each other perfectly. It is not 

 food that Little Lena craves, but the usual mark 

 of affection. So I gently run the nail of my fore- 

 finger several times along the rugose ridges of her 

 shell — a familiarity which she endures at first with 

 the same seeming distrustful condescension that a 

 tame bird betrays when it allows its neck to be 

 scratched. None the less, this procedure on my 



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