“You nasty little thing!” she said, “I don’t like you any more. Oh yes, you can tell Mother if you like, but I shan’t get into trouble. I’m going away from this horrid old field.”
Buttercup ran off to her Mother and Daisy got up and tried to wash her knees.
Presently she heard all the others calling her.
“I shan’t go,” she said to herself, but when she turned her head a tiny bit and looked out of the corner of her eye so that the others should not see that she was looking, she saw that they were all running as hard as they could towards the gate that led into the road.
“I’ll just go and see what it is,” she said, “and then I can run away afterwards, but I won’t speak to any of them.” She hurried across the field, and when she got to the gate some of the kind cows made room for her, and she looked into the road. There she saw every sort and kind of animal! There was going to be a circus in the town, and all the animals were walking down the road in a procession. First came the elephants, four of them—walking two and two—with their keepers beside them. Then came two camels, then a large cage of lions—drawn by horses—then another cage with tigers, and another with wolves in it. Oh, it was going to be a fine circus!
Then there were a great many horses ridden by people in beautiful dresses, and, last of all, came the most wonderful thing of all. It was a bull led by a man dressed like an Indian in gold-embroidered satin, who carried a trumpet in his hand, which he blew now and then after shouting, “Honour to my lord, the Sacred Bull of Burma!”
“Good gracious!” said Daisy’s Mother, “is that a bull? Poor thing, he does look ill and worn-like; a run in our field for a month or two would set him up for ever.”
Indeed the bull did look rather strange. All his hair had been carefully shaved, leaving him just in his pink skin, and then he had been tattooed, which means that he was covered with a pattern, drawn in blue. His horns had been gilded. He gave one look at the cows looking over the gate, as the procession turned the corner, and that was the last they saw of him. Daisy had quite forgotten her quarrel with Buttercup, and they both walked away from the gate, talking of the wonderful things they had just seen, and especially of the bull.