238 



THE RAT 



and that might give you a bad impression at the 

 very start. On the other hand, you might get 

 hold of a few easy-going, cheerful spirits, who 

 would be perfectly willing to sacrifice their liberty 

 for a comfortable home and plenty of food, and 

 then you would reap endless amusement from the 

 experiment, especially if you could contrive to let 

 your captives out for a run in the room now and 

 then, when they had sufficiently learnt that their 

 cage was their home. 



If you cared to see some good rope-climbing you 

 might keep the cage on a shelf, and give them 

 a rope, stretched tight from the shelf to the floor, 

 as their only way of going up and down, and they 

 w^ould very soon learn to use it as their ladder. 

 Then you would see why Nature has given us tails, 

 or, at any rate, how we use them as balancing- 

 poles when we do a bit of a climb. Of course, 

 I do not say that there would not be trouble ; 

 relations would be severely strained now and then. 

 When a rat wants to build a nest — and that is 

 pretty nearly always — he takes what he fancies 

 without asking you, whether it is the stuffing of 

 your best cushion, or part of your Sunday hat, or a 

 letter from your sweetheart, or a page or two 

 of a valuable book, or your very last bootlace — or, 



