However, they had no money, so they could not feed peanuts to the elephant. Some other children, though, had bought bags of the nuts, and these they tossed in to the big animal. There was a sign on his yard, which said no one must feed the animals, but no one stopped the children, so Sue did see, after all, the elephant chewing the roasted nuts.
For some time Bunny and Sue watched the elephants. There were two of them, and, after a while, a keeper came into the yard, and handed a large mouth organ to the biggest elephant. The wise creature held it in his trunk, and, to the surprise of Sue and her brother, began to blow on the mouth organ, making music, though of course the elephant could not play a regular tune.
"Oh, isn't he smart, Bunny!" cried Sue.
"He—he's a regular circus elephant!" Bunny cried. "I like him!"
The other children, who had come to Central Park, also enjoyed seeing the big elephant eat peanuts, and play a mouth organ.
"I'd like to see some monkeys," said Bunny, after a bit, when the elephant seemed to have gone to sleep standing up, for elephants do sleep that way.
"The monkeys are over in that house," a boy told Bunny, pointing to a brown building not far from the elephant's cage and yard.
"Oh, let's go!" cried Sue.
Soon she and her brother were watching the monkeys do funny tricks, climb up the sides of their cage, eat peanuts and pull each other's tails and ears.
Bunny and Sue spent some time in Central Park, looking at the different animals. There was one, almost as big as an elephant, only not so tall. He was called a hippopotamus, and he swam in a tank of water, next door to a pool in which lived some mud turtles and alligators. When the hippopotamus opened his mouth it looked big enough to hold a washtub.