Jungle People did, for the Master of the Jungle, and brought him all the news that a python of his size would naturally hear.

What Kaa did not know about the Middle Jungle, as they call it, — the life that runs close to the earth or under it, the boulder, burrow, and the tree-bole life, — might have been written upon the smallest of his scales.

That afternoon Mowgli was sitting in the circle of Kaa’s great coils, fingering the flaked and broken old skin that lay all looped and twisted among the rocks just as Kaa had left it. Kaa had very courteously packed himself under Mowgli’s broad, bare shoulders, so that the boy was really resting in a living arm-chair.

“Even to the scales of the eyes it is perfect,” said Mowgli, under his breath, playing with the old skin.