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“It’s holidays, all Saturdays,” Morris explained; “und we dassent to ride on no cars.”

“Why not?” asked Patrick.

“It’s law, the Rabbi says,” Nathan supplemented. “I don’t know why is it; on’y rides on holidays ain’t fer us.”

“I guess,” Eva sagely surmised; “I guess rubber-neck-boat-birds rides even ain’t fer us on holidays. But I don’t know do I need rides on birds what hollers.”

“You’ll be all right,” Patrick assured her. “I’m goin’ to let ye hold me hand. If ye can’t go on Saturday, I’ll take ye on Sunday–next Sunday. Yous all must meet me here on the school steps. Bring yer money and bring yer lunch too. It’s a long way and ye’ll be hungry when ye get there. Ye get a terrible long ride for five cents.”

“Does it take all that to get there?” asked the practical Nathan. “Then how are we goin’ to get back?”

Poor little poet soul! Celtic and improvident! Patrick’s visions had shown him only the triumphant arrival of his host and the beatific joy of Eva as she floated by his side on the most “fancy” of boat-birds. Of the return journey he had taken no thought. And so the saving and planning had to be done all over again. The struggle for the first nickel had been wearing and wearying, but the amassment of the second was beyond description difficult. The children were worn from long strife and many sacrifices, for the temptations to spend six or nine cents are so much more insistent and unusual than are yearnings to squander lesser sums. Almost daily some member of the band would confess a fall from grace and solvency, and almost daily Isaac Borrachsohn was called upon to descant anew upon the glories of the Central Park. Becky, the chaperon, was the most desultory collector of the party. Over and over she reached the proud heights of seven or even eight cents only to lavish her horde on the sticky joys of the candy cart of Isidore Belchatosky’s papa or on the suddy charms of a strawberry soda.

Then tearfully would she repent of her folly, and bitterly would the others upbraid her, telling again of the joys and wonders she had squandered. Then loudly would she bewail her weakness and plead in extenuation: “I seen the candy. Mouses from choc’late und Foxy Gran’pas from sugar–und I ain’t never seen no Central Park.”

“But don’t you know how Isaac says?” Eva would urge. “Don’t you know how all things what is nice fer us stands in the Central Park? Say, Isaac, you should better tell Becky, some more, how the Central Park stands.”

And Isaac’s tales grew daily more wild and independent of fact until the little girls quivered with yearning terror and the boys burnished up forgotten cap pistols. He told of lions, tigers, elephants, bears and buffaloes, all of enormous size and strength of lung, so that before many days had passed he had debarred himself, by whole-hearted lying, from the very possibility of joining the expedition and seeing the disillusionment of his public. With true artistic spirit he omitted all mention of confining house or cage and bestowed the gift of speech upon all the characters, whether brute or human, in his epic. The merry-go-round he combined with the menagerie into a whole which was not to be resisted.

“Und all the am’blins,” he informed his entranced listeners; “they goes around, und around, und around, where music plays und flags is. Und I sets on a lion und he runs around, und runs around, und runs around. Say–what you think? He has smiling looks und hair on the neck, und sooner he says like that ‘I’m awful thirsty,’ I gives him a peanut und I gets a golden ring.”

“Where is it?” asked the jealous and incredulous Patrick.

“To my house.” Isaac valiantly lied, for well he remembered the scene in which his scandalized but sympathetic uncle had discovered his attempt to purloin the brass ring which, with countless blackened duplicates, is plucked from a slot by the brandishing swords of the riders upon the merry-go-round. Truly, its possession had won him another ride–this time upon an elephant with upturned trunk and wide ears–but in his mind the return of that ring still rankled as the only grief in an otherwise perfect day.