The kind clergyman lifted poor little Bear, too tired to resist, and tenderly placed him in Papa’s arms, who gratefully pressed the stranger’s hand, whilst his quick eye searched for each household darling to make them over to Hugh’s care, to be piloted through the line of noisy hack and baggage-men, to the waiting carriage.
Little Jack remembered to lift his hat, as he again caught sight of the stranger clergyman disappearing in the crowd, and cried out, to his lady-like Sister Daisy’s horror—
“Good-bye, Mister Story Teller.”
Barnum’s animals, in their cages, passing through a city’s crowded streets, are remarkably quiet and well-behaved, but many an inhabitant of the good city looked up, that night, as a large, old-fashioned family carriage and two bay horses, driven by the blackest of coachmen, displaying, in a very pleased and harmless way, the whitest of teeth, bearing the noisy little Madison Avenue Menagerie, rattled over the curb-stones of Exchange Place, right under the shadow of the Soldiers’ monument, through Westminster street, in its fearful narrowness, and over the Great Bridge. The carriage halted here a moment that the little animals might catch a breath of the fresh sea air coming up from the bay, through the little river which forms the lungs of Providence, and gives this beautiful city its Venetian aspect.
With mingled feelings of enjoyment and terror, the young folk see themselves ascending the steep hill-side, and are nothing loath to find the carriage halting before a quaint, old house, whose every window sends out a stream of light to welcome them.
A cheery-looking old colored woman, with a brightly-turbaned head, appears at the door, whilst a younger one peeps over her shoulder. Papa calls out in a proud, glad tone—
“Here, Celia and Nan, come get these poor, stray, hungry little creatures. I found them at the station and took pity on them. I make them over to you and wish you joy in your bargain—
“So give them a supper of water and bread,