“Just the same you didn’t,” said Pee-wee. “Why didn’t you stop when I first raised my hand? Gee whiz, can’t you see I’m a—I’m in the official patrol? Maybe you think I didn’t mean what I said when I motioned. Now, you see, you’ve got only yourself to blame. Gee whiz, that shows what you get for defying the law—geeee whiz!”
“It serves him right,” little Irene whispered to Pee-wee, as if she were afraid to advertise her loyalty. “It serves him a good lesson.”
Pee-wee would have withdrawn from this scene of devastation, escorting Irene, except that the approaching music grew louder and louder, and he and his little charge paused to ascertain the occasion of such a festive serenade. He was not long kept in doubt. Around the corner of Broad Avenue, which was the first cross street beyond Allerton, where Pee-wee was stationed, appeared a proud figure in a towering hat, swinging a fantastic rod equipped with a sumptuous brazen sphere.
“Oh, look at the soldier man, he’s got a barrel on his head, like,” gasped little Irene in awestruck admiration.
“It’s a drum-major,” said Pee-wee, staring. “Gee whiz, the circus is coming!”
Even the irate driver of the truck paused in the midst of the chaos he had wrought to gaze at the imposing spectacle which emerged around the corner and advanced down the wide thoroughfare of Terrace Avenue. Behind the red-coated band Pee-wee beheld three pedestrians walking abreast, and he knew that they would not be obedient to his raised arm. These were huge elephants, complacent, serene, contemptuous of the law.
“Oh, look—look!” gasped little Irene. “They’re efilants, they’re real efilants! Will they eat you?”
Pee-wee was too absorbed with the motley spectacle to answer. Behind the elephants came rolling cages, and amid the strains of martial music he could hear a mighty intermittent roaring—savage, terrible. Little Irene grasped his arm.
“Don’t you be scared,” he said. “I won’t let them hurt you.”