re, Chris," invited Danny, "take your bite next."

Jerry became immediately suspicious at such unaccustomed politeness on
Danny's part and he was not at all surprised when Danny, once the
remainder of the apple was again in his hands, took to his heels.

"Save me a bite!" cried Celia Jane, swallowing the morsel in her mouth
so quickly that she came near to choking, and tagged after her older
brother as fast as she could run.

"Danny!" cried Jerry. "That's no fair!"

He started to run after the vanishing apple, but was quickly passed,
first by Chris and then by Nora, who called back to him: "Maybe I can
save the core for you, Jerry."

Bitterness arose in Jerry's soul. He knew that he couldn't catch up with
Danny, but he kept on running. That old, odd feeling that he did not
belong to the Mullarkeys, though living with them, came over him again,
and he had already begun to slow down his pace when he was brought to a
full and sudden stop by a picture blazoned on a billboard.

He stared spellbound, without even winking. Of all delectable things, it
was the picture of an elephant! A purple elephant jumping over a green
fence, its trunk raised high in the air until it almost touched the
full, red moon at the top of the poster. The elephant had such a roguish
and knowing look in his small eyes and such a smirk on his funny little
mouth that Jerry began to smile without being the least bit conscious
that he was doing so.

The smile kept spreading in complete understanding of the look on the
elephant's face and he probably would have laughed aloud had not the
picture somehow made him think of something, he couldn't just remember
what. A dim idea seemed to be trying to break into his mind but couldn't
find the right door. In his effort to puzzle out what it was the
elephant made him think of, Jerry entirely forgot the large red apple
and the perfidy of Danny.

"What're you lookin' at?" called Danny, who had stopped half a block
farther on when he no longer heard Jerry's pursuing footsteps.

Jerry did not answer. Instead, he squatted down on the grassy bank
between the sidewalk and the billboard and feasted his eyes on that
delightfully extravagant elephant which seemed almost to wink at him.
Jerry half expected to see the elephant grab the moon and balance it on
the end of his trunk, or toss it up into the sky and catch it again as
it fell.

"Come on, Jerry, if you want the core," called Danny again. "That's all
that'