A Sheaf

We had left my rooms, and were walking briskly down the street towards the river, when my friend stopped before the window of a small shop and said:

“Gold-fish!”

I looked at him very doubtfully; one had known him so long that one never looked at him in any other way.

“Can you imagine,” he went on, “how any sane person can find pleasure in the sight of those swift things swimming for ever and ever in a bowl about twice the length of their own tails?”

“No,” I said, “I cannot—though, of course, they’re very pretty.”

“That is, no doubt, the reason why they are kept in misery.”

Again I looked at him; there is nothing in the world I distrust so much as irony.

“People don’t think about these things,” I said.

“You are right,” he answered, “they do not. Let me give you some evidence of that. . . . I was travelling last spring in a far country, and made an expedition to a certain woodland spot. Outside the little forest inn I noticed a ring of people and dogs gathered round a gray animal rather larger than a cat. It had a sharp-nosed head too small for its body, and bright black eyes, and was moving restlessly round and round a pole to which it was tethered by a chain. If a dog came near, it hunched its bushy back and made a rush at him. Except for that it seemed a shy-souled, timid little thing. In fact, by its eyes, and the way it shrank into itself, you could tell it was scared of everything around. Now, there was a small, thin-faced man in a white jacket holding up a tub on end and explaining to the people that this was the little creature’s habitat, and that it wanted to get back underneath; and, sure enough, when he held the tub within its reach, the little animal stood up at once on its hind legs and pawed, evidently trying to get the tub to fall down and cover it. The people all laughed at this; the man laughed too, and the little creature went on pawing. At last the man said: ‘Mind your back-legs, Patsy!’ and let the tub fall. The show was over. But presently another lot came up; the white-coated man lifted the tub, and it began all over again.