Dropping into a long low chair, he raised his feet on to the long leg-rest extensions of its arms, and, as he settled down and waited for coffee, wondered why no such chairs are known in the West; why the trunks of the palms looked less flat in the moonlight than in the daylight (in which, from that spot, they always looked exactly as though cut out of cardboard); why Providence had not arranged for perpetual full-moon; why the world looked such a place of peaceful, glorious beauty by moonlight, the bare cruel mountains like diaphanous clouds of tenderest soothing mist, the Judge’s hideous bungalow like a fairy palace, his own parched compound like a plot of Paradise, when all was so abominable by day; and, as ever—­why his darling, Lenore Stukeley, had had to marry de Warrenne and die in the full flower and promise of her beautiful womanhood.

Having finished his coffee and lighted his pipe (vice the over-dry friable cheroot, flung into the garden) the Major then turned his mind to serious and consecutive thought on the subject of her son, his beloved little pal, Dammy de Warrenne.

Poor little beggar!  What an eternity it had seemed before he had got him to sleep.  How the child had suffered.  Mad!  Absolutely stark, staring, raving mad with sheer terror....  Had he acted rightly in showing him the picture?  He had meant well, anyhow.  Cruel phrase, that.  How cuttingly his friend de Warrenne had observed, “You mean well, doubtless,” on more than one occasion.  He could make it the most stinging of insults....  Surely he had acted rightly....  Poor little beggar—­but he was bound to see a picture or a real live specimen, sooner or later.  Perhaps when there was no help at hand....  Would he be like it always? Might grow out of it as he grew older and stronger.  What would have happened if he had encountered a live snake?  Lost his reason permanently, perhaps....  What would happen when he did see one, as sooner or later, he certainly must?

What would be the best plan?  To attempt gradually to inure him—­or to guard him absolutely from contact with picture, stuffed specimen, model, toy, and the real thing, wild or captive, as one would guard him against a fell disease?

Could he be inured?  Could one “break it to him gently” bye and bye, by first drawing a wiggly line and then giving it a head?  One might sketch a suggestion of a snake, make a sort of dissimilar clay model, improve it, show him a cast skin, stuff it, make a more life-like picture, gradually lead up to a well-stuffed one and then a live one.  Might work up to having a good big picture of one on the nursery wall; one in a glass case; keep a harmless live one and show it him daily.  Teach him by experience that there’s nothing supernatural about a snake—­just a nasty reptile that wants exterminating like other dangerous creatures—­something to shikar with a gun.  Nothing at all supernatural....