"The elephants of this place are wild, but I have read that Asiatic elephants, for instance, have a strange weakness for children. It has never occurred in India that an elephant has harmed a child, and if one falls in a rage, as sometimes happens, the native keepers send children to pacify him."
"Ah, you see! You see!"
"In any case you did well in not allowing me to kill him."
At this Nell's pupils flashed with joy like two little greenish flames. Standing on tiptoe, she placed both her hands on Stas' shoulders and, tilting her head backward, asked, gazing into his eyes:
"I acted as if I had how many years? Tell me! As if I had how many years?"
And he replied:
"At least seventy."
"You are always joking."
"Get angry, get angry, but who will free the elephant?"
Hearing this, Nell began at once to fawn like a little kitten.
"You—and I shall love you very much and he will also."
"I am thinking of that," Stas said, "but it will be hard work and I shall not do it at once, but only when we are ready to start upon a farther journey."
"Why?"
"Because if we should free him before he is entirely tame and becomes attached to us, he would go away at once."
"Oh! He won't go away from me."
"You think that he already is like me," retorted Stas with impatience.
Further conversation was checked by the arrival of
