THE LURE OF KARTABO 15 
sun never to return, and his successor Edward, 
with unbelievably large and graceful hands and 
feet, was a better cook, with the softest voice and 
gentlest manner in the world. 
But Bertie was our joy and delight. He too 
may be compared to a star—one which, origi- 
nally bright, becomes temporarily dim, and 
finally attains to greater magnitude than before. 
Ultimately he became a fixed ornament of our 
culinary and taxidermic cosmic system, and what- 
ever he did was accomplished with the most re- 
markable contortions of limbs and body. To 
watch him rake was to learn new anatomical pos- 
sibilities; when he paddled, a surgeon would be 
moved to astonishment; when he caught butter- 
flies, a teacher of physical culture would not have 
believed his eyes. 
At night, when our servants had sealed them- 
selves hermetically in their room in the neigh- 
boring thatched quarters, and the last squeak 
from our cots had passed out on its journey to 
the far distant goal of all nocturnal sounds, we 
began to realize that our new home held many 
more occupants than our three selves. Stealthy 
rustlings, indistinct scrapings, and low murmurs 
kept us interested for as long as ten minutes; 
