The beginning of the armadillos

rised!`
`Excellent!` said Stickly-Prickly. `But it`s straining your back-plates a little. They are all overlapping now, instead of lying side by side.`
`Oh, that`s the result of exercise,` said Slow-and-Solid. `I`ve noticed that your prickles seem to be melting into one another, and that you`re growing to look rather more like a pinecone, and less like a chestnut-burr, than you used to.`
`Am I?` said Stickly-Prickly. `That comes from my soaking in the water. Oh, won`t Painted Jaguar be surprised!`
They went on with their exercises, each helping the other, till morning came; and when the sun was high they rested and dried themselves. Then they saw that they were both of them quite different from what they had been.
`Stickly-Prickly,` said Tortoise after breakfast, `I am not what I was yesterday; but I think that I may yet amuse Painted Jaguar.
`That was the very thing I was thinking just now,` said Stickly-Prickly. `I think scales are a tremendous improvement on pricklesto say nothing of being able to swim. Oh, won`t Painted Jaguar be surprised! Let`s go and find him.`
By and by they found Painted Jaguar, still nursing his paddy-paw that had been hurt the night before. He was so astonished that he fell three times backward over his own painted tail without stopping.
`Good morning!` said Stickly-Prickly. `And how is your dear gracious Mummy this morning?`
`She is quite well, thank you,` said Painted Jaguar; `but you must forgive me if I do not at this precise moment recall your name.`
`That`s unkind of you,` said Stickly-Prickly, `seeing that this time yesterday you tried to scoop me out of my shell with your paw.`
`But you hadn`t any shell. It was all prickles,` said Painted Jaguar. `I know it was. Just look at my paw!`
`You told me to drop into the turbid Amazon and be drowned,` said Slow-Solid. `Why are you so rude and forgetful to-day?`
`Don`t you remember what your mother told you?` said Stickly-Prickly,
`Can`t curl, but can swim
Stickly-Prickly, that`s him!
Curls up, but can`t swim
Slow-Solid, that`s him!`
Then they both curled themselves up and rolled round and round Painted Jaguar till his eyes turned truly cart-wheels in his head.
Then he went to fetch his mother.
`Mother,` he said, `there are two new animals in the woods to-day, and the one that you said couldn`t swim, swims, and the one that you said couldn`t curl up, curls; and they`ve gone shares in their prickles, I think, because both of them are scaly all over, instead of one being smooth and the other very prickly; and, besides that, they are rolling round and round in circles, and I don`t feel comfy.`
`Son, son!` said Mother Jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, `a Hedgehog is a Hedgehog, and can`t be anything but a Hedgehog; and a Tortoise is a Tortoise, and can never be anything else.`
`But it isn`t a Hedgehog, and it isn`t a Tortoise. It`s a little bit of both, and I don`t know its proper name.`
`Nonsense!` said Mother Jaguar. `Everything has its proper name. I should call it “Armadillo” till I found out the real one. And I should leave it alone.`
So Painted Jaguar did as he was told, especially about leaving them alone; but the curious thing is that from that day to this, O Best Beloved, no one on the banks of the turbid Amazon has ever called Stickly-Prickly and Slow-Solid anything except Armadillo. There are Hedgehogs and Tortoises in other places, of course (there are some in my garden); but the real old and clever kind, with their scales lying lippety-lappety one over the other, like pine-cone scales, that lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon in the High and Far-Off Days, are always called Armadillos, because they were so clever.