LITMIR.BIZ

THE REVOLT OF THE OYSTER

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      “Our remote ancestor was probably arboreal.”—Eminent scientist.

      From his hut in the tree-top Probably Arboreal looked lazily down a broad vista, still strewn with fallen timber as the result of a whirlwind that had once played havoc in that part of the forest, toward the sea. Beyond the beach of hard white sand the water lay blue and vast and scarcely ruffled by the light morning wind. All the world and his wife were out fishing this fine day. Probably Arboreal could see dozens of people from where he crouched, splashing in the water or moving about the beach; and even hear their cries borne faintly to him on the breeze. They fished, for the most part, with their hands; and when one caught a fish it was his custom to eat it where he caught it, standing in the sea.

      In Probably Arboreal's circle, one often bathed and breakfasted simultaneously; if a shark or saurian were too quick for one, one sometimes was breakfasted upon as one bathed.

      In the hut next to Probably Arboreal, his neighbour, Slightly Simian, was having an argument with Mrs. Slightly, as usual. And, as usual, it concerned the proper manner of bringing up the children. Probably listened with the bored distaste of a bachelor.

      “I will slap his feet every time he picks things up with them!” screamed Slightly Simian's wife, an accredited shrew, in her shrill falsetto..

      “It's natural for a child to use his feet that way,” insisted the good-natured Slightly, “and I don't intend to have the boy punished for what's natural.” Probably Arboreal grinned; he could fancy the expression on Old Sim's face as his friend made this characteristically plebeian plea.

      “You can understand once for all, Slightly,” said that gentleman's wife in a tone of finality, “that I intend to supervise the bringing-up of these children. Just because your people had neither birth nor breeding nor manners——”

      “Mrs. S.!” broke in Slightly, with a warning in his voice. “Don't you work around to anything caudal, now, Mrs. S.! Or there'll be trouble. You get me?”

      On one occasion Mrs. Slightly had twitted her spouse with the fact that his grandfather had a tail five inches long; she had never done so again. Slightly Simian himself, in his moments of excitement, picked things up with his feet, but like many other men of humble origin who have become personages in their maturity, he did not relish having such faults commented upon.

      “Poor old Sim,” mused Probably Arboreal, as he slid down the tree and ambled toward the beach, to be out of range of the family quarrel. “She married him for his property, and now she's sore on him because there isn't more of it.”

      Nevertheless, in spite of the unpleasant effect of the quarrel, Probably found his mind dwelling upon matrimony that morning. A girl with bright red hair, into which she had tastefully braided a number of green parrot feathers, hit him coquettishly between the shoulder blades with a handful of wet sand and gravel as he went into the water. Ordinarily he would either have taken no notice at all of her, or else would have broken her wrist in a slow, dignified, manly sort of way. But this morning he grabbed her tenderly by the hair and sentimentally ducked her. When she was nearly drowned he released her. She came out of the water squealing with rage like a wild-cat and bit him on the shoulder.

      “Parrot Feathers,” he said to her, with an unwonted softness in his eyes, as he clutched her by the throat and squeezed, “beware how you trifle with a man's affections—some day I may take you seriously!”

      He let the girl squirm loose, and she scrambled out upon the beach and threw shells and jagged pieces of flint at him, with an affectation of coyness. He chased her, caught her by the hair again, and scored the wet skin on her arms with a sharp stone, until she screamed with the pain, and as he did it he hummed an old love tune, for to-day there was an April gladness in his heart.

      “Probably! Probably Arboreal!” He spun around to face the girl's father, Crooked Nose, who was contentedly

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