“Oh, but my dear Stubbins,” said the Doctor, throwing another log of wood on the fire, “your clothes aren’t dry yet.  You’ll have to wait for them, won’t you?  By the time they are ready to put on we will have supper cooked and eaten—­ Did you see where I put my bag?”

“I think it is still in the hall,” I said.  “I’ll go and see.”

I found the bag near the front door.  It was made of black leather and looked very, very old.  One of its latches was broken and it was tied up round the middle with a piece of string.

“Thank you,” said the Doctor when I brought it to him.

“Was that bag all the luggage you had for your voyage?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, as he undid the piece of string.  “I don’t believe in a lot of baggage.  It’s such a nuisance.  Life’s too short to fuss with it.  And it isn’t really necessary, you know—­Where did I put those sausages?”

The Doctor was feeling about inside the bag.  First he brought out a loaf of new bread.  Next came a glass jar with a curious metal top to it.  He held this up to the light very carefully before he set it down upon the table; and I could see that there was some strange little water-creature swimming about inside.  At last the Doctor brought out a pound of sausages.

“Now,” he said, “all we want is a frying-pan.”

We went into the scullery and there we found some pots and pans hanging against the wall.  The Doctor took down the frying-pan.  It was quite rusty on the inside.

“Dear me, just look at that!” said he.  “That’s the worst of being away so long.  The animals are very good and keep the house wonderfully clean as far as they can.  Dab-Dab is a perfect marvel as a housekeeper.  But some things of course they can’t manage.  Never mind, we’ll soon clean it up.  You’ll find some silver-sand down there, under the sink, Stubbins.  Just hand it up to me, will you?”

In a few moments we had the pan all shiny and bright and the sausages were put over the kitchen-fire and a beautiful frying smell went all through the house.

While the Doctor was busy at the cooking I went and took another look at the funny little creature swimming about in the glass jar.

“What is this animal?” I asked.

“Oh that,” said the Doctor, turning round—­“that’s a Wiff-Waff.  Its full name is hippocampus Pippitopitus.  But the natives just call it a Wiff-Waff—­on account of the way it waves its tail, swimming, I imagine.  That’s what I went on this last voyage for, to get that.  You see I’m very busy just now trying to learn the language of the shellfish.  They have languages, of that I feel sure.  I can talk a little shark language and porpoise dialect myself.  But what I particularly want to learn now is shellfish.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, you see, some of the shellfish are the oldest kind of animals in the world that we know of.  We find their shells in the rocks—­turned to stone—­thousands of years old.  So I feel quite sure that if I could only get to talk their language, I should be able to learn a whole lot about what the world was like ages and ages and ages ago.  You see?”