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THE STRAND MAGAZINE.

pole, and it shook the more the higher she ascended—she acquired the little present half way up, and descended to where Punch waited to renew the display. But Judy was thoughtful, and indisposed for the noble art. She had found a new thing in life, something to live for and think about—buns. So she thought about them. The place where they were to be found, she reasoned—for she had never noticed the man at the opposite end of the long stick—was up that pole; the pole being probably a bun-tree. So that, whenever disposed for buns, it only needed to climb the pole and find some. Having arrive at this stage in the argument, it seemed to strike her that another bun was desirable, there and then. Wherefore she began another rather nervous climb, her eyes fixed steadily above to where the buns were expected to appear.

The expedition was a failure, and Judy pondered it, with the apparent decision that the buns must be a little higher up. So she started again; and found one! She has got over that little bun-tree superstition by this time, and can climb better. Also she and the others have already broken up entirely five of the sticks upon which buns arrive, thus from time to time cutting off the supply. And although Toby and the Policeman are very useful as seconds at the later boxing matches, very few buns get past Judy. Punch, the henpecked and wily, waits good-humouredly at the foot of the pole, and has been known to catch many a bun that Judy climbed for.

Through all the bear-dens you may see bears in attitudes sufficiently human to be quaint and grotesque. A squat like that of an Indian idol, an oddly human looking out of window, or a lounge at the bars, clumsily suggestive of a lounge at a bar in the Strand; and of all the attitudes those of the gentle little Malays are quaintest. A certain bandy human respectability hangs about these small fellows. Dolly, after turning his somersault, will sit and inspect his reward just as a child will