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A terrible hullabaloo between a pair of Opossums up a neighbouring gum tree arrested the attention of both Dot and the Koala. Presently the sounds of snarling, spitting, and screaming ended, and an Opossum climbed out to the far end of a branch, where the moonlight shone on his grey fur like silver.
"Then, where are you now?" asked the Koala, rather perplexed. "I'm not at home," replied Dot, not knowing how to make her position clear to the little animal. "Then you live where you don't live?" said the Koala; "where is it?" and the little Bear looked quite unhappy in its attempt to understand what Dot meant. "I've lost it," said Dot. "I don't know where it is."
I've done it many times before at night." Dot looked round to say good-bye to the Koala, but the little animal had heard the Kangaroo speak of blacks, and that word suggested to its empty little head that it must keep its skin whole, so, without waiting to be polite to Dot, it had sneaked up its gum tree and was well out of sight.
In his own dolorous fashion Koala succeeded in conveying to Finn what the Wolfhound already knew quite well in his heart of hearts, that the attitude he complained of was simply the penalty of his running amuck on the previous night.
"Because they live in the same tree of course," said the Koala. "If they lived in different trees, and never quarrelled, they wouldn't like it at all. They'd find life dull, and they'd get sulky. There's nothing worse than a sulky possum. They are champions at that." "They make a dreadful noise with their quarrelling," said Dot. "They are nearly as bad as the Flying Foxes over there.
Lupus, in fact, was a half-bred dingo, differing from other dingoes of the Mount Desolation pack only inasmuch as that he was greater than the rest, more massive in trunk and shoulder, more terrible in tooth and claw. His feet were weapons almost as deadly as a bear's feet, by which I mean the feet of the northern and western bear, and not those of inoffensive Koala.
The vulpine phalanger does duty for a fox; the fat and sleepy little dormouse phalanger takes the place of a European dormouse. Both are so ridiculously like the analogous animals of the larger continents that the colonists always call them, in perfect good faith, by the familiar names of the old-country creatures. The koala poses as a small bear; the cuscus answers to the racoons of America.
"What luck!" laughed the Opossum, as it cleared into the nearest tree. "I am glad," sighed the Koala, as it slowly moved away; "that trial made my head feel empty." "Well, there go three of the most important witnesses," grumbled the Pelican. "My eye! what a spree!" said the Judge.
When the Koala had taken a timid peep at itself, the Opossum said that the Koala now had an idea of how stupid it looked, and the little bear went off to get used to having an idea in its head. The Opossum was so pleased with its spiteful joke that it hastily said good night, and hurried away to tell it to the other possums.
"Because if you had the day it wouldn't be any good to you, and if they had the night it wouldn't be any good to them. So your night couldn't be their day, and their day couldn't be your night." "You make my head feel empty," said the Koala. "But you'd think differently if a flock of Kookooburras settled on your tree, and guffawed idiotically when you wanted to sleep."
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