A DEPARTURE
entirely. There was always a pair of giraffe-legs sticking out, or an elephant-trunk, taking from the stiffness of its outline, and reminding us that our motley crowd of friends inside were uncomfortably cramped for room and only too ready to leap in a cascade on the floor and browse and gallop, flutter and bellow and neigh, and be their natural selves again. I think that none of us ever really thought very much of Ham and Shem and Japhet. They were only there because they were in the story, but nobody really wanted them. The Ark was built for the animals, of course—animals with tails, and trunks, and horns, and at least three legs apiece, though some unfortunates had been unable to retain even that number. And in the animals were of course included the birds—the dove, for instance, grey with black wings, and the red-crested woodpecker—or was it a hoopoe?—and the insects, for there was a dear beetle, about the same size as the dove, that held its own with any of the mammalia.
Of the doll-department Charlotte had naturally been sole chief for a long time; if the staff were
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