Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson

quickly as possible. That was why Granny was given some beef stew for Midge whenever she took him to the kitchen door of a restaurant, which meant that the family had something to eat every day.
    Daddy and Mummy always tell the story of Midge, sometimes several times over to the same people. Sometimes they say that Midge got some of the stew and sometimes they say that he didn’t get any at all. I never tell the same story over again to the same person.
    All dogs are loyal. They remind one a lot of men, with the exception perhaps of pug-dogs. There’s something wrong about having a pug-dog. If a Female has a pug-dog you know at once that she’s on the shelf. This happened particularly when Daddy was young. But it isn’t a good thing to get married and desert the pug-dog, either. Many have done that and gone from the frying-pan into the fire, Daddy says. Even if one has a pug-dog, one must be loyal. It’s all
very
difficult.
    Actually, things are difficult for me, too. I don’t think about Females very much because they only drive you out of your mind if you are a sculptor. But I think about Daddy’s pets all the time. There havebeen so many of them that it has been difficult to keep count of them all and there’s always the same trouble with them whether they are furry or not. I get so tired thinking about them.
    Poppolino is Daddy’s friend once and for all just as much as Cavvy is. It’s a fact and Mummy and I can’t do anything about it. He’ll live until he’s a hundred years old.
    But all the others! The sheep, for example. It walked on to the veranda without wiping its feet first. It stamped and banged around and got everything it took a fancy to. Then it took itself off again on its stiff legs and with its silly bleating and its silly dirty backside wobbling as it went down the steps and it had no idea of all the love that it had been given!
    Cats! They didn’t understand either. They were either podgy puddings that just slept or they were beautiful and wild and took no notice of Daddy at all.
    And the squirrels! He was never allowed to stroke them. They snapped and were quick and independent. They just wanted to grab and grab and grab and then jump away and look pretty in peace and quiet on their own.
    But I tell you that the worst of all was the crow. My goodness, that crow was artful! She knew all about Daddy and she liked being stroked. She was much more dangerous than Poppolino. Poppolino lives by his feelings and can’t tell the difference between right and wrong.
    But the crow knew. She worked things out and was calculating. She looked at Daddy and then she looked at me. You could see that she was sizing things up carefully. Then she croaked in a very deep voice, plaintively and tenderly and hung her head and went up to Daddy’s legs. She rubbed herself against him, gently and helplessly, because she knew that that was what he liked.
    But when she was alone with me she said caw! caw! suddenly and shamelessly, like the crow she was, and we stared at each other and never became reconciled, and I knew that she had fleas!
    Daddy never saw them because he didn’t want to. He let her croak and gurgle in her usual simpering way and said: now listen, do you know it’s three o’clock in the morning? Do you imagine I’ve got something here for you? Do you think I’ve got time to bother with every little crow?
    You have, you have, you have, I lay in bed and thought, biting the sheets and hating the crow. Of course you’ve got time and you worked out last night what you were going to give her to eat. Then they went out to have a look.
    One day she was sitting on the railing by the steps picking and plucking herself. Caw! caw! said Daddy enticingly from the veranda, but the crow just went on picking for fleas.
    Can’t you hear him calling? I said, and pushed her and she got her leg caught in the railings and it snapped in two.