"Or dig under," suggested Nannie, "if the bars did not go down into the ground so far."
"Oh my, oh my, oh me! Isn't this life awful, with nothing to do but wander around this old yard where the grass is all tramped down and burnt by the hot sun, with people walking by and looking at you all the time? Only an occasional kind-hearted person gives you a peanut or the core of an apple," grumbled Billy Junior.
"I wish your father were here," said Nannie. "When everything looked hopeless, he always found a way out."
"So do we wish he was here," chimed in Daisy and Billy Junior.
"Mercy sakes alive!" exclaimed Daisy the next moment. "See where those kids are! In the elephant yard!" and she jumped to her feet and ran to the fence which separated the yard where the goats were confined from that of the elephants. "How did you two get over there?" she asked severely. "Come straight out of that yard! The elephants may not like kids and kill you."
"You are perfectly correct, madame," said an elephant. "I dislike goats of all kinds, and so would you if in my place. Forced to live month in and month out next to a goat pen where the disagreeable odor all goats have is carried to my nostrils until I am sick from it and cannot eat is far from pleasant."
"Did I hear you say," said Billy Junior, stepping up beside his wife, "that you do not like the smell of goats?"
"That is exactly what I did say," replied the elephant. "And I will repeat it if you wish me to do so."