Allan recalled how Main Street cleared, or tried to clear, when the elephant was first discovered; and the way the elephant swung his trunk, and dropped into a hobbling trot before he struck the trolley car. He recalled the frantic movement of the motorman as he caught sight of the big, lumbering beast at the corner.
“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the brave way that Policeman Ryan stepped out into the street, waving his club, and the way he dodged when the elephant swung at him with his trunk.
“If I’d only had a camera!” He recalled the way the elephant dropped on his knees in the hole. He recalled the funny wrinkling of the elephant’s hind legs as if he had on a pair of trousers that were too large for him. “If I’d only had a camera!”
I suppose that the way he felt about this elephant affair had a good deal to do with the fact that after that Allan always liked so much to photograph elephants. But I must not get ahead of my story.
To properly go on with the story I must tell you that about six weeks after the elephant got himself in a hole, and the circus people, with derrick and tackle, got him out again (you never saw an elephant more truly ashamed of himself than that elephant), Little McConnell saw Allan Hartel come out of the express office with a package.
Now you, reader, will guess at once that this was a camera, but McConnell had no suspicion of this fact.
“Hello!” called McConnell, “what have you got there?”
McConnell was thirteen, two years younger than Allan. He was called Little McConnell to distinguish him from his brother, who was called Big McConnell. It would be hard to say why no one ever called him Percy—his first name. Even Allan always called him simply McConnell. He was the kind of boy, somehow, that you always call by his last name and never know why.
McConnell and Allan had been chums for a long time, and McConnell certainly should have known what was in the bundle had he not been up to Greenby visiting his aunt for two weeks, and had not Allan kept a certain little enterprise a secret from everybody before that. But when Allan said, “Guess,” he was much puzzled for a moment. Then he made the most successful guess he ever had made in his life.
“Not a camera?” he exclaimed.