The boys enjoyed this banquet very much indeed. Besides the coffee, they had water, which they sweetened in the tumblers with large lumps of white sugar. They talked all the time while they were eating, each in his own language, and laughed very merrily. "After all," said Rollo, "this is the very best place in the whole garden. Feeding the bears is very good fun; but this is infinitely better."
After remaining for half an hour at the table, and eating till their appetites were completely satisfied, they concluded to go back and see the monkeys again.
In the mean time, Mr. George and his friend, with Jennie, had been engaged in an entirely different part of the garden; for the whole enclosure is so large that it takes many days to see the whole. On one side, bordering on a street, there is a long row of houses and gardens, occupied by professors, who give courses of lectures on the plants and animals which the garden contains. On another is a magnificent range of buildings, occupied as a museum, containing endless collections of dried plants, of minerals and shells, of skeletons, and the stuffed skins of birds and beasts. Then there is a very large tract of level land, between two splendid avenues, all laid out in beds of plants and flowers, forming a series of parterres, extending as far as the eye can reach, and presenting the gayest and most beautiful combination of colors that can be conceived. Jennie was very much delighted with all these things, as she walked about in these parts of the garden with her uncle, though she was somewhat uneasy all the time because she could not see any thing of Rollo.
"I don't believe," said she at last to her uncle, as they were standing on the margin of a beautiful little artificial pond, full of lilies and other aquatic plants, "I don't believe that we can find him at all in such a large garden."
"Yes," said Mr. George; "there'll be no difficulty. There is one universal rule for finding boys in the Garden of Plants."
"What is that?" asked Jennie.
"Go to the places where they keep the monkeys and the elephants," said Mr. George; "and if you don't find them there at once, wait a few minutes, and they'll be pretty sure to come."
It was as Mr. George had predicted; for, on going to the palace of the monkeys, there they found Rollo and Carlos laughing very heartily to see a big monkey holding a little one in its arms as a human mother would a baby.
The party, when thus united, went together once more over the principal places where the two divisions of it had gone separately before, so that all might have a general idea of the whole domain; and then, going out at a different gate from the one by which they had entered, they went home, all resolving to come again, if possible, at some future day.