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come the while he sets in a cage."
"Did he have a rubber neck?" Isaac inquired, and Morris reluctantly
admitted that he had not been so blessed.
"In the Central Park," Isaac went on, "all the birds is got rubber necks."
"What color from birds be they?" asked Eva.
"All colors. Blue und white und red und yellow."
"Und green," Patrick Brennan interjected determinedly. "The green
ones is the best."
"Did you go once?" asked Isaac, slightly disconcerted.
"Naw, but I know. Me big brother told me."
"They could to be stylish birds, too," said Eva wistfully. "Stylish und
polite. From red und green birds is awful stylish for hats."
"But these birds is big. Awful big! Mans could ride on 'em und ladies
und boys."
"Und little girls, Ikey? Ain't they fer little girls?" asked the only little
girl in the group. And a very small girl she was, with a softly gentle
voice and darkly gentle eyes fixed pleadingly now upon the bard.

"Yes," answered Isaac grudgingly; "sooner they sets by somebody's
side little girls could to go. But sooner nobody holds them by the hand
they could to have fraids over the rubber-neck-boat-birds und the
water-lake, und the fishes."
"What kind from fishes?" demanded Morris Mogilewsky, monitor of
Miss Bailey's gold fish bowl, with professional interest.
"From gold fishes und red fishes und black fishes"--Patrick stirred
uneasily and Isaac remembered--"und green fishes; the green ones is
the biggest; and blue fishes und all kinds from fishes. They lives way
down in the water the while they have fraids over the
rubber-neck-boat-birds. Say--what you think? Sooner a
rubber-neck-boat-bird needs he should eat he longs down his neck und
eats a from-gold fish."
"'Out fryin'?" asked Eva, with an incredulous shudder.
"Yes, 'out fryin'. Ain't I told you little girls could to have fraids over
'em? Boys could have fraids too," cried Isaac; and then spurred by the
calm of his rival, he added: "The rubber-neck-boat-birds they hollers
somethin' fierce."
"I wouldn't be afraid of them. Me pop's a cop," cried Patrick stoutly.
"I'd just as lief set on 'em. I'd like to."
"Ah, but you ain't seen 'em, und you ain't heard 'em holler," Isaac
retorted.
"Well, I'm goin' to. An' I'm goin' to see the lions an' the tigers an' the
el'phants, an' I'm goin' to ride on the water-lake."
"Oh, how I likes I should go too!" Eva broke out. "O-o-oh, how I likes I
should look on them things! On'y I don't know do I need a ride on
somethings what hollers. I don't know be they fer me."
"Well, I'll take ye with me if your mother leaves you go," said Patrick
grandly. "An' ye can hold me hand if ye're scared."

"Me too?" implored Morris. "Oh, Patrick, c'n I go too?"
"I guess so," answered the Leader of the Line graciously. But he turned
a deaf ear to Isaac Borrachsohn's implorings to be allowed to join the
party. Full well did Patrick know of the grandeur of Isaac's holiday
attire and the impressionable nature of Eva's soul, and gravely did he
fear that his own Sunday finery, albeit fashioned from the blue cloth
and brass buttons of his sire, might be outshone.
At Eva's earnest request, Sadie, her cousin, was invited, and Morris
suggested that the Monitor of the Window Boxes should not be slighted
by his colleagues of the gold fish and the line. So Nathan Spiderwitz
was raised to Alpine heights of anticipation by visions of a window box
"as big as blocks and streets," where every plant, in contrast to his
lanky charges, bore innumerable blossoms. Ignatius Aloysius
Diamantstein was unanimously nominated as a member of the
expedition; by Patrick, because they were neighbors at St. Mary's
Sunday-school; by Morris, because they were classmates under the
same rabbi at the synagogue; by Nathan, because Ignatius Aloysius was
a member of the "Clinton Street gang"; by Sadie, because he had "long
pants sailor suit"; by Eva, because the others wanted him.
Eva reached home that afternoon tingling with anticipation and
uncertainty. What if her mother, with one short word, should close
forever the gates of joy and boat-birds? But Mrs. Gonorowsky met her
small daughter's elaborate plea with the simple question:
"Who pays you the car-fare?"
"Does it need car-fare to go?" faltered Eva.
"Sure does it," answered her mother. "I don't know how much, but
some it needs. Who pays it?"
"Patrick ain't said."
"Well, you should better ask him," Mrs. Gonorowsky advised, and, on
the next morning, Eva did. She thereby buried the leader under the

ruins of his fallen castle of clouds, but he struggled through them with
the suggestion that each of his guests should be her, or his, own banker.
"But ain't you got no money 't all?" asked