“Oh, fiddle!” replied Betty indifferently, “I like monkeys.”
“Did you ever see one?” asked Mary Jane, “a really truly live one?”
Betty stared. “Why of course!” she answered, “haven’t you?”
Mary Jane shook her head.
“Well then you ought to go up to the Zoo,” she said positively, “let’s all go.” She jumped up and ran over to her mother. “Mother!” she announced, “Mary Jane’s never seen a monkey—never! Can’t we take her up to the Zoo and show ’em to her?”
“Never seen a monkey!” exclaimed Mrs. Holden and she was as surprised as Betty had been, “are you sure?”
“Yes, Betty’s right,” said Mrs. Merrill. “Mary Jane has seen a great many things for a little girl who has just had her sixth birthday. But she hasn’t seen a monkey. Her father and I were saying only last night that we must take the girls up to the Zoo as soon as possible.”
“Let’s all go next Saturday,” suggested Mrs. Holden, “no, we can’t go next Saturday because the girls and I have some shopping to do. Let’s go a week from Saturday. By that time the restaurant in Lincoln Park will be open. The way we do,” she explained to the Merrills, “is to take our lunch, a picnic lunch, with us. We start up about eleven, eat over by the lake and then have the whole afternoon for watching the animals; we eat dinner in that nice restaurant, before dark, and then come home in the early evening. Can you all go on that day?”
Mrs. Merrill said she was sure they could, so plans were made right then and there.
Mary Jane and Alice thought those two weeks, or nearly two weeks, never would pass. Of course there was the doll cart to play with and Mary Jane loved it exactly as much as ever. But she did want to see the monkeys, and the foxes (Betty told her she would love the foxes!) and all the creatures that Betty seemed to know so much about and which she had never even seen.