Page:The Wouldbegoods.djvu/146

 Elephant's is a nice, quiet part, and she was quite big enough for a young one. Then the black pig could be Learned, and the other two could be something else. They had also got the goat; he was tethered to a young tree.

The donkey was there. Denny was leading him in the halter.

The dogs were there, of course—they always are.

So now we only had to get the turkeys for the applause, and the calves and pigs.

The calves were easy to get, because they were in their own house. There were five. And the pigs were in their houses too. We got them out after long and patient toil, and persuaded them that they wanted to go into the paddock, where the circus was to be. This is done by pretending to drive them the other way. A pig only knows two ways—the way you want him to go and the other. But the turkeys knew thousands of different ways, and tried them all. They made such an awful row we had to drop all ideas of ever hearing applause from their lips, so we came away and left them.

"Never mind," H. O. said, "they'll be sorry enough afterwards, nasty, unobliging things, because now they won't see the circus. I hope the other animals will tell them about it."

While the turkeys were engaged in baffling the rest of us, Dicky had found three sheep who seemed to wish to join the glad throng, so we let them.