And when he grows suspicious, he will grow more suspicious. And when he has grown more suspicious, he will grow even more suspicious and start asking questions. And when he has asked all the questions, we don’t know what he will do next, we are only big toes and not that clever.
But still, Caecilius and his big toes were on the right track – if Barkus Wooferinicum were not around at lunchtime, Filius would soon discover the awful truth that his animal friend was no longer of this earth, but was instead under this earth.
Now, at that moment, a dog which looked exactly like Barkus Wooferinicum happened to walk through the garden and this gave Caecilius a crafty idea. In a flash he pounced on the animal and shaved off all its fur, using a fig. Then he stuck the fur all over his own body and waited for Filius to come home for lunch.
Soon Filius came home for lunch.
Exactly what I was waiting for, thought Caecilius.
‘Salve, Filius,’ he heard Vesuvius say from the kitchen, where she was busy sticking together thousands and thousands of pencils with a rubber on the end so that she could reach up into the sky and draw a face on the moon. (It took Vesuvius another week of sticking pencils together but eventually she managed it, and she drew a very fine face on the moon indeed. And even today, if you look up at the moon you will be able to see the face that Vesuvius drew all those years ago! We know him as ‘The Man in the Moon’ but she called him ‘Bobbling Ed’.)
‘How was your morning at school?’
‘It was excellent,’ said Filius. ‘We learnt about a brand-new shape that’s just been invented. It is called a “square”. Now, where is my faithful dog, I wish to play with him – ah, there you are,’ he beamed, as Caecilius came running in to the kitchen on all fours, barking merrily away.
Well, Filius and ‘Barkus Wooferinicum’ played together for the whole lunch hour that day.
And the next day, and the next day too. This went on for over three weeks, and then Caecilius began to get bored.
‘Vesuvius,’ he said to his wife one evening as they were preparing for bed, ‘I have done something dreadful.’
And he told her the whole sorry story of how he had accidentally killed Barkus Wooferinicum and forty-seven other dogs. And how, rather than admit this to Filius, he had instead been dressing up as a dog for the past three weeks.
‘I am a turtle fighter,’ sighed Caecilius. ‘I mean, I am a terrible father.’ He scooped up a grade ‘B’ fart and looked at it sadly. ‘No, no, I don’t even deserve this,’ he sighed, and threw the fart down the toilet, which for farts is a sort of nightclub where they can dance with all their friends.
‘Perhaps you are not as terrible as you think, my dear husband,’ smiled Vesuvius, and she flung open the window with her mind to reveal an unexpected sight. It was Filius, and he was playing with forty-eight dogs in the garden. And the biggest and shiniest of all the dogs was –
‘Barkus Wooferinicum!’ laughed Caecilius. ‘He’s not dead at all! And neither are the other dogs I thought I’d killed!’
‘Actually the other forty-seven dogs are dead,’ said Vesuvius sadly. ‘The ones Filius is playing with are a different forty-seven dogs. But you are quite right – Barkus Wooferinicum himself is absolutely fine.’
‘See, Father, you only stunned him with that fig!’ cried Filius from the garden.
‘So you knew the whole story all along,’ laughed Caecilius, fondly stroking his son’s hair even though he wasn’t standing anywhere near Filius and couldn’t possibly have reached him. ‘And yet you made me dress up as a dog for three whole weeks!’
‘Yes, Father,’ replied Filius seriously. ‘For the moral of Ancient Pompeii is this: “Be thou honest in thy dealings”.’
‘It is true,’ said Caecilius thoughtfully. ‘I was not honest with you, Filius, and for that I apologise. I am sorry I killed your dog.’
‘But you didn’t kill him, remember?’ said Filius.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Caecilius. ‘Well, then, I am sorry I didn’t kill your dog.’
‘Hold on,’ said Filius, ‘you’re sorry you didn’t kill him?’
‘No, that came out wrong,’ said Caecilius, ‘but the important thing is, I’m tired, I’m going to bed. Goodnighticus, everyoneicus.’
So Caecilius and Vesuvius went to bed and slept, and dreamt their happy dreams. Caecilius dreamt he was a chef.
The next morning Vesuvius woke up and when she put on her shoe, she said, ‘Oh, what’s this? There is something in my shoe.’ And when she looked inside she got the surprise of her life because she found nothing other than –
‘A GHERKIN!’ cried Vesuvius, aghast. ‘How in the name of Jupiter did that get there?’
But only one man in the whole of Pompeii knew the answer, and that man was already well on his way to market to get the early fart, chuckling as he went.
THE
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