“Bushels—bushels, my man?”
“Yes, sir, he was a-picking the apples with that trunk of his, and tucking them in as fast as ever they’d go. A beast! he’ll fill hisself before he’s done. He won’t leave off now he’s got the chance, and he’ll kill anybody who goes nigh him. You see, the master keeps him pretty short to tame him down and keep him from going on the rampage. It’s all a mistake having a thing like that in a show. You take my word for it, sir. If you goes in for a mennar-gerry you take to monkeys. They don’t take nothing to keep, for the public feeds them on nuts and buns, and if it warn’t for their catching cold and going on the sick-list they’d be profit every ounce.”
“Er—thank you, my man,” said Morris haughtily; “but I don’t think it probable that I shall venture upon a peripatetic zoo—eh, young gentlemen?”
“Oh no, sir!” came in chorus.
“Can we see the huge pachyderm from here?”
“Packing apples, sir? No, no, don’t you alter that there, sir. You called him fugity beast just now, and you can’t beat that.—No, you can’t see him. He’s in there among them apple-trees.”
“Why, he’s got into old Bunton’s orchard, sir,” cried Slegge, and he stepped forward to the opening. “Yes, you can’t see the elephant, sir, but you can see the men all round. I think they are tying him up to a tree, sir.”
“Yes, that’s likely,” said the man grimly. “I dare say they’ve all got a bit of string in their pockets as will just hold him.”
“Er—do you think we could go up a little closer, my man, without the young gentlemen getting into danger?” said Morris, in the full expectation that he would be told it would be dangerous in the extreme.
“Go closer, sir? Yes, of course you can. He won’t hurt none of you so long as you don’t try to take his apples away. If yer did I shouldn’t like to be you.”