Playmate

He wants a playmate.

It is not safe, I hear, to play tricks with kings: just as lions sometimes come quietly to someone that rubs them, they are still lions when they choose, and then their playmate will lie dead.

An indulgent playmate, Grannie would lay aside the long scratchy-looking letter she was writing (heavily crossed ‘to save notepaper’) and enter into the delightful pastime of ‘a chicken from Mr Whiteley's’.