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“Now, what is this foolishness he talks of hippopotamuses?” asked Danny of his mother, as he passed through the kitchen. “Have you been taking him to the Zoo? And for what?”

“I have not,” said Mrs. McCree. “He sets by the windy all day. ‘Tis little recreation a blind man among the poor gets at all. I’m thinkin’ they wander in their minds at times. One day he talks of grease without stoppin’ for the most of an hour. I looks to see if there’s lard burnin’ in the fryin’ pan. There is not. He says I do not understand. ‘Tis weary days, Sundays, and holidays and all, for a blind man, Danny. There was no better nor stronger than him when he had his two eyes. ‘Tis a fine day, son. Injoy yeself ag’inst the morning. There will be cold supper at six.”

“Have you heard any talk of a hippopotamus?” asked Danny of Mike, the janitor, as he went out the door downstairs.

“I have not,” said Mike, pulling his shirtsleeves higher. “But ’tis the only subject in the animal, natural and illegal lists of outrages that I’ve not been compained to about these two days. See the landlord. Or else move out if ye like. Have ye hippopotamuses in the lease? No, then?”

“It was the old man who spoke of it,” said Danny. “Likely there’s nothing in it.”

Danny walked up the street to the Avenue and then struck northward into the heart of the district where Easter–modern Easter, in new, bright raiment–leads the pascal march. Out of towering brown churches came the blithe music of anthems from the choirs. The broad sidewalks were moving parterres of living flowers–so it seemed when your eye looked upon the Ester girl.

Gentlemen, frock-coated, silk-hatted, gardeniaed, sustained the background of the tradition. Children carried lilies in their hands. The windows of the brownstone mansions were packed with the most opulent creations of flora, the sister of the Lady of the Lilies.

Around a corner, white-gloved, pink-gilled and tightly buttoned, walked Corrigan, the cop, shield to the curb. Danny knew him.

“Why, Corrigan,” he asked, “is Easter? I know it comes the first you’re full after the moon rises on the seventeenth of March–but why? Is it a proper and religious ceremony, or does the Governor appoint it out of politics?”

“‘Tis an annual celebration,” said Corrigan, with the judicial air of the Third Deputy Police Commissioner, “peculiar to New York. It extends up to Harlem. Sometimes they has the reserves out at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. In my opinion ’tis not political.”

“Thanks,” said Danny. “And say–did you ever hear a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean.”

“Nothing larger than sea turtles,” said Corrigan, reflecting, “and there was wood alcohol in that.”

Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his.

The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor- made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly.

The family entrance of Dugan’s caf’e was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.

“Say, Tim,” he said to the waiter, “why do they have Easter?”

“Skiddoo!” said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. “Is that a new one? All right. Tony Pastor’s for you last night, I guess. I give it up. What’s the answer–two apples or a yard and a half?”