“I feel as if my ears were growing as big as my neck,” said the giraffe. “Just listening to any noise I don’t like makes me feel that way. But I don’t mind the katydids as I do those confounded frogs with their ‘Mudger-ka-rum, mudger-ka-rum. Knee-deep, knee-deep!’”
“Is that what you think they say?” asked Billy.
“Yes; what do you think they are calling?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound to me as if they were saying what it does to you.”
“Well, perhaps it would not sound that way to me but I once heard one of the keepers say the reason people think frogs say mudger-ka-rum was because there was once an Irishman going home late at night, half drunk, a jug of rum under his arm, and he thought the frogs were calling to him to give them his jug of rum as mudger-ka-rum sounded like my jug of rum.”
“Ha! Ha!” laughed the giraffe. “That is a good one! And hereafter whenever I hear frogs I shall think of that saying. Listen now; it really does sound as if that was what they were calling.”
“I can’t go to sleep until the train starts, so let us tell stories until it does,” proposed Billy.
“Very well, I’m willing,” agreed the zebra and giraffe.
“You tell the first one. Tell us something about your experiences in the war,” added the giraffe.
“Oh, for mercy sakes don’t say war to me! I am sick of the very name of it and I can’t bear to even think of its horror, much less tell about the black deeds I saw. You two tell me about your homes in Africa.”