Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/245

232 left him to his dinner of rabbits, which I hadn't the heart to stay and see him devour alive.

I was walking toward the camel's pagoda, when, all of a sudden, a long, dark, curling thing came over my shoulder, and I felt warm breath in my face. 'It's the boa;' I thought, and gave a skip which carried me into the hedge, where I stuck, much to the amusement of some children riding on the elephant whose trunk had frightened me. He had politely tried to tell me to clear the way, which I certainly had done with all speed. Picking myself out of the hedge I walked beside him, examining his clumsy feet and peering up at his small, intelligent eye. I'm very sure he winked at me, as if enjoying the joke, and kept poking his trunk into my pocket, hoping to find something eatable.

I felt as if I had got into a foreign country as I looked about me and saw elephants and