“Quite right,” said he, “but if you will offer it a bun he will gladly eat it.” And as he persisted, she, still incredulous, offered the bun, which the eagle seized in his crooked claws, and devoured with immense zest. Fan was amazed, and Eden said triumphantly, “There, I told you so.”
Long afterwards she was alone one day in the Gardens, and going to the eagle's cage, and feeling satisfied that no one was looking, offered a bun to an eagle. The bird only stared into her face with its fierce eyes, as much as to say, “Do you take me for a monkey, or what? You are making a great mistake, young woman.” It happened that someone did see her—a rude man, who burst into a loud laugh; and Fan walked away with crimson cheeks, and the mystery remained unexplained. Perhaps someone has compassionately enlightened her since.
In the snake-house a brilliant green tree-snake of extraordinary length was taken from its box by the keeper, and Eden wound it twice round her waist; and looking down on that living, coiling, grass-green sash, knowing that it was a serpent, and yet would do her no harm, she experienced a sensation of creepy delight which was very novel, and curious, and mixed. The kangaroos were a curious people, resembling small donkeys with crocodile tails, sitting erect on their haunches, and moving about with a waltzing hop, which was both graceful and comical. One of them, oddly enough, had a window in the middle of its stomach out of which a baby kangaroo put its long-eared head and stared at them, then popped it in again and shut the window. The secretary-bird proved himself a grand actor; he marched round his cage, bowed two or three times to Fan, then performed the maddest dance imaginable, leaping and pounding the floor with his iron feet, just to show how he broke a serpent's back in South Africa.
From the monkey-house and its perpetual infinitely varied pantomime they were conducted into a secret silent chamber, where an interesting event had recently occurred, and Mrs. Monkey, who was very aristocratic and exclusive, received only a few privileged guests. They found her sitting up in bed and nursing an infant that looked exceedingly ancient, although the keeper solemnly assured Fan that it was only three days old. Mrs. Monkey gravely shook hands with her visitors, and condescendingly accepted a bon-bon, which she ate with great dignity, and an assumption of not caring much about it.
“Don't you think, Miss Affleck,” said Eden, sinking his voice, “that you ought to say something complimentary—that the little darling looks like its mamma, for instance, even if you can't call it pretty?”
Fan laughed merrily, whereat Mrs. Monkey flew into a rage, and seemed so inclined to commit an assault on her visitors, that they were glad to make a hasty retreat.
In the blithe open air Fan observed, when she had recovered her gravity:
“How good the keepers are to take so much trouble to show us things!”
“Thanks to you,” he replied, hypocritically. “If I had come alone they wouldn't have troubled to show me things.”
Then they roused the nocturnal animals from their slumbers in the straw—the wingless apteryx, like a little armless man with a very long nose; the huge misshapen earthy-looking ant-bear, and those four-footed Rip Van Winkles, the quaint, rusty, blear-eyed armadillos. But the giant ant-eater was the most wonderful, for he walked on his knuckles, and strode majestically about, for all the world like a mammalian peacock, exhibiting his great tail. They also saw his tongue, like a yard of pink ribbon drawn out by an invisible hand from the tip of his long cucumber-shaped head. In the parrot-house the shrieking of a thousand parrots and cockatoos, all trying to shriek each other down, drove them quickly out.