Animal Language
It happened one day that the Doctor was sitting in his kitchen talking with the Cat's-meat-Man who had come to see him with a stomach-ache.
"Why don't you give up being a people's doctor, and be an animal-doctor?" asked the Cat's-meat-Man.
The parrot, Polynesia, was sitting in the window looking out at the rain and singing a sailor-song to herself. She stopped singing and started to listen.
"You see, Doctor," the Cat's-meat-Man went on, "you know all about animals-much more than what these here vets do.
That book you wrote-about cats, why, it's wonderful! I can't read or write myself-or maybe I'd write some books.
But my wife, Theodosia, she's a scholar, she is.
And she read your book to me.
Well, it's wonderful-that's all can be said-wonderful.
You might have been a cat yourself.