At last, midnight striking, reminded Mother Etienne that it was time for sleep. Then they all went to bed, each head full of the wonders of tomorrow's performance.
71CHAPTER VIII
MOTHER ETIENNE'S DREAM
Mother Etienne was very restless again that night, haunted, not by a dreadful nightmare as before, but by a troublesome 72 dream. Everything she had just seen at Sir Booum's appeared before her, the tiniest incidents, the least important details.
All the explanations, concerning the creatures in the menagerie given her by the trainer, came back to her, like an object lesson in a curious dream.
The principal person in it was Yollande. Yollande as Barnum, Yollande as trainer, Yollande holding in one hairy wing a stout whip, in the other the pitchfork as a protection against claws and teeth.
"You see here," said Yollande in a loud voice, "you see here the wild ox from Madagascar, which takes the place of 73 the horse. In that country he is harnessed to small, light vehicles which he draws along rapidly. This other is a buffalo from Caffraria. He is a Jack-of-all-trades, sometimes ridden, sometimes driven, sometimes laden, sometimes yoked to the plough. Those big striped animals you see yonder are giraffes. Their long necks permit them, without having recourse to a ladder, to eat the young shoots of the mimosa, of which they are very fond, as well as the fresh dates which usually grow at the tops of the palm-trees."
