Tales of the Long Bow
they could best be stopped from doing it again. It occurred to me they might be shy of a wild pig or a pug that bit them. So, of course, I travelled the next time with dreadfully dangerous animals in cages, warning everybody of the fiercest tigers and panthers that ever were known. When they found it out and didn't want to let it out, they could only fall back on their own tomfoolery of a prohibition wholesale. Of course, it was the same with my other stunt, about the sick people going to health resorts to be cured of various fashionable and refined maladies. The pigs had a dignified, possibly a rather dull time, in elaborately curtained railway carriages with hospital nurses to wait on them; while I stood outside and assured the railway officials that the cure was a rest cure, and the invalids must on no account be disturbed."
"What a liar you are!" exclaimed Hood in simple admiration.
"Not at all," said Pierce with dignity. "It was quite true that they were going to be cured."
Crane, who had been gazing rather abstractedly out of the window, slowly turned his head and said abruptly: "And how's it going to end? Do you propose to go on doing all these impossible things?"
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