Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/255

Rh thing. It ain't so easy to hide an elephant and a giraffe. We got to put 'em in some place where people won't be likely to suspect. See here; if you'll let us hide our property in your house for a week, we'll agree to pay you two hundred and fifty dollars as soon as we've sold the beasts."

"Why, you can't ever get that critter through the front door, much less upstairs," said Mrs. Noah, pointing to the elephant.

Ramo Bung now broke in excitedly. "Oh yes, yes!" he exclaimed; "it is a just perfection of sizes. You regard with pleasure?" He snatched a hoe from the ground by the front steps and applied it to the elephant's side in measurement. The creature was not a large one, being only one and a half hoe-handles in height. Running up to the double front doors, the Hindu demonstrated the possibility of entrance. "You accept the certainty? Even he can with kneeling crawl, I guiding in wisdom!"

Mrs. Noah Figtry had already rapidly estimated what two hundred and fifty dollars could do to improve her son-in-law's place. In an instant her mind was made up, her cool practical head defeated by her childlike emotions and kind, indulgent heart.

"Well," she said, "when Ebeneezer left I didn't calculate to take in no boarders, but if you think you can get that elephant into the parlor, I don't know but what I'll let you try it, just to see how you come out. I can't think what you can do with a giraffe, unless you put his head up a chimney somewheres. But perhaps he can be made to go in the bath-room with a little squeezin'. What you got in that bag, anyway? Looks like it was boilin'. I won't tolerate no rabbits! Of all things, I do hate a rabbit."

The Princess Ziffio was already loosening the ropes which bound the sack, and at this moment the mass fell to the ground and began to squirm convulsively.

"Snakes, I do declare! I can't abide snakes. I couldn't sleep a wink at night! You just take that bag of varmints as far away from the house as you can get it."

"Oh, he won't hurt you," asserted the Princess; "he's only a boy-constrictor, and he's got thawed out in the sun, that's all. We'll just put him in a cool place, and he won't give you a bit of trouble."

"There ain't no cellar to this house, and the coolest place I know is the ice-chest. He might possibly scrouge in there, though I can't say as I'd be at all easy in my mind about it. They ain't any lock on the door." Mrs. Noah was still holding her skirts raised, and kept at a safe distance.

Hardly had she said this, when a terrific and prolonged roar of blood-curdling intensity shook the shutters of the cage. Mrs. Noah was inside the house in an instant, behind barred doors. She re-appeared later at the parlor window, which she gently raised a quarter of an inch. "You never said nothin' about lions," she cried, hysterically. "I consider I'm doin' considerable to welcome an elephant into my front parlor, and a giraffe in the bath-room, but roarin' lions is altogether too much. You go along and don't bother me any more."

Mr. Steggins reassured her with a laughing voice. "Why, lady," he said, "Joshua wouldn't hurt a fly. He was born in captivity, and he's forty years old, without a tooth in his head. He's tame as a puppy. I can have him right in my room. He wouldn't roar if he wa'n't so hungry, but he hasn't been fed for two days, and then only bones and sawdust."

Mrs. Noah timidly emerged again. "You ain't got any seven-horned beasts or nothin', have you? That roar did give me a start, but I don't know but I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb if I've got to keep house for a whole menagerie. It does seem a shame to leave a dumb animal outside without a roof to help himself to, don't it? I'll go up and sit on the ridge-pole while you get that critter into the house; and mind you lock the door after him when you get him upstairs. I ain't goin' to be devoured by a ragin', rampin' lion at my time of life." At that she scurried up-stairs, and, a little later, appeared on the flat roof, from which post of security she surveyed the installation over the eaves.

One shutter was removed from the side of the cage, and Joshua—a tawny, dignified Numidian lion—was discovered, his eyes blinking with the unaccustomed glare. Into his den Steggins entered