exclaimed Darn. "Ask me what's right with it.
Everything's wrong with it."

"It looks like the picture of the el'funt--almost," defended Jerry.

"It looks as much like that as I do like a giraffe."

Danny turned his back on Darn and the latter exclaimed:

"What's that blue pants leg for, hangin' down from your coat tail?"

"Why--why--that's the el'funt's tail," Danny replied reluctantly.

"My gorry!" cried Darn, giving way to shrieks of laughter so that he had
to sit down on the ground and double up with the paroxysms of mirth.
"_An el'funt's tail!_ Oh, my gorry!" and again he rocked back and forth,
holding his sides. Then he was attacked by a fit of coughing and
finally, when he got his breath, he said:

"Don't you kids know nothing of national history? Hain't you ever seen a
picture of an el'funt? Its tail is nothing like that a-tall."

"How's it different?" Danny asked in a very meek voice.

"It's small and round, like a rope," Jerry interposed quickly.

"Of course it is," was Darn's comment.

"I told him so!" exclaimed Jerry.

"But how'd I know that you knew," asked Danny, aggrieved, "when you
didn't know how you knew?"

"I don't know," was all the explanation that Jerry could give.

"All I can say is, you'd better study national history, Danny, and learn
how the four-footed friends of man are made," remarked Darn.

"How do _you_ know el'funts' tails are small and round?" asked Chris.

"Because I'm no dumb-head and learn things."

"I ain't no dumb-head," protested Chris and at the same time Danny
asserted:

"Chris ain't no dumb-head."

Jerry saw the green elephant's front feet double up and he jumped down
from the barrel, a little bit scared.

"He is, too," said Darn, "and so are you. Jerry Elbow there's got more
sense than both of you put together, even if he ain't got no father and
mother."

"I haven't either," said Jerry. "I jest somehow knew one thing Danny
didn't about el'funts' tails. Danny knows lots more'n I do."

"I guess you'd better take that back about Chris bein' a dumb-head,"
threatened Danny, scowling from under the elephant's trunk.

"An' you'd better take it back about Danny's bein' one," remarked Chris.

"I won't any such thing," retorted Darn.

"We'll make you," challenged Danny, all his Irish fighting blood up.

"I'd like to see the kid could make me do anything I didn't want to,"
and Darn doubled up his fists and flung them out in the air at an
imaginary adversary.