d
already gathering proved quite too miscellaneous for his fastidious
nerves; the dumb brutes he could stand, but these pushing and chattering
human monkeys were uninteresting, and he went on through the region of
wild beasts to that of tame ones, where the patient donkeys were busily
employed carrying timid little children and showing their skill in their
favorite game of doing the least possible amount of work in any given
time. Though the motion of these creatures was barely perceptible, the
pace seemed frightful to some of the alarmed infants clinging to their
backs. Millard looked at them a moment in amusement, then refusing the
donkey path he turned to the left toward the shady Mall. The narrow walk
he chose was filled to-day with people, who, having fed the elephant,
admired the diving of the seal, wondered at the inconceivable ugliness
of the hippopotamus, watched the chimpanzee tie knots in the strands of
an untwisted rope by using her four deft hands, and shuddered a little
at the young alligators, were now moving away--a confused mass of
children, eager to spend their nickels for a ride at the carrousel, and
elders bent on finding shelter from the heat under the elms that
overhang the Mall. There was a counter-current of those who had entered
the Park by remoter gateways and were making their way toward the
menagerie, and Millard's whole attention was absorbed in navigating
these opposite and intermingling streams of people and in escaping the
imminent danger of being run over by some of the fleet of
baby-carriages. From a group of three ladies that he had just passed a
little beyond the summer-house, he heard a voice say, half under
breath:

"Mr. Millard, I declare!"

It was Agatha Callender, and as he turned to greet her he saw behind her
Phillida supporting her mother.

"Mama is not very well, and we persuaded her to take a holiday,"
explained Agatha; "and I am trying to find a way for her out of this
crowd."

Millard took charge of the convoy and succeeded in landing the party on
shady seats at the lower end of the Mall, where the colossal Walter
Scott is asking his distinguished countryman Robert Burns, just
opposite, if all poets engaged in the agonizing work of poetic
composition fall into such contortions as Burns does in this perpetual
brass.

After a while Agatha grew as restless as the poet seems in the statue.
She had brought money enough to take her party about the Park in the
regular coa