“What do you mean—tickle me with your trunk?” he asked, speaking animal talk, of course. “Do you mean with one of your two tails?”
“I haven’t two tails,” answered the big animal. “The little one is a tail, to be sure, but the other is my trunk, or nose. See! I can wiggle it any way I like to;” and this he did.
“My! that’s wonderful!” cried Chunky. “I can wiggle my tail, even if it is shorter than yours, and I can open my mouth real wide, but I can’t make my nose go as yours does. And so you call it a trunk! What do you do with it?”
“It is like a hand to me,” said the big animal. “I pick up in it things to eat, and I pull off the leaves of trees that grow above my head on the high branches. What is your name, little hippo boy?”
“My name is Chunky. And what is yours?”
“I’m called Tum Tum, the jolly elephant, and I’m in a book,” said the big animal. “Now don’t ask me what a book is, for I don’t know. All I know is I’m in one and the book is about a lot of my adventures.”
“What’s adventures?” asked Chunky.
“Things that happen to you,” said Tum Tum, the jolly elephant. “If I had tickled you with my trunk, that would have been an adventure.”
“And if the crocodile had bitten me when I was out playing water-tag a while ago, would that have been an adventure?” asked Chunky.
“It would,” said Tum Tum. “But that’s all I know about a book—I’m in one, and there’s a picture of me. I had a lot of adventures in the jungle, and then I was caught and taken away far off and put in a circus. There I had lots of fun.”