Jolly the Giraffe was a happy thing, and he used to spend a great part of each day dreaming. When a house-cleaning mistress went up an adjoining stairway, Jolly the Giraffe would undulate his long neck very slowly toward the door, and wish it was done, just for to see what the mistress would do next. He never, as his mother foresaw, got so used to it as to make a bridge of his neck, and very often his body would feel tired trying to peer over the surrounding hills.
But it was not for that reason alone that he longed for something to happen. He wanted an adventure, something more exciting and happy than the quiet life Nature led in the forest. He would find one, he thought, if it were to be even at the expense of the lions and leopards that every day danced around in the company of his aunts, claws and all, without doing each other any injury. So he expressed a yearning wish for adventure, but no one knew how to attain it.
One fine morning Jolly the Giraffe went out among the daisies and butterflies to see what birds had said to his mother’s wish to know where they put up at night. He had quite made up his mind what answer he should give her, when his aunt, Miss Giraffe, came hopping to him and said she must return home at once because a lion had entered the forest and made the animals feel frightened. Jolly did not remember his aunt’s having spoken in that way when much larger animals had roamed the flower-bestrewn plain before the house. But nature must be pleased in her own way, he thought, seeing it was the only one left, and therefore took in good part her strange economy of husbandry, or rather hunting—but the lions, etc., played tip-cat with the united forest, and turned day into night with their uproar.
But with the advent of a lion Mr. and Mrs. Hereafter’s household grew so sad. The mistress had always been a woman of decided character, but this new-dropped danger frightened her out of her wits. She locked herself up in her room and never came out.
One day Jolly determined to brave it, and off he set over the hills where the lion had been seen. A few steps brought him to a chain of hills, beyond which had been the realm of the lion. Nothing about it, however, frightened him. Nature seemed uninterrupted at first, daisy and butter-cup blossomed as in the forest glade; but inch by inch Jolly felt the change. The grass was white with the bones of animals big and small, and the very trees grew dead from being gnawed by great sharp fangs. Plump little birds flew screeching and screaming back before the wind that whirled and cut at their sides; and Jolly gave a low groan, and his back went suddenly unimpregnated. In horror he began to run, and just as he was going to spring out from the ground territory of the lion, a voice from behind him said: “What’s the matter with the weather?”
Jolly the Giraffe turned his head round. A lioness sat quietly chewing her dinner, carefully picking with her claws the bony remains of a fawn out of her teeth. Jolly the Giraffe prepared himself at once for a dash across the rows of daisies, and said hurriedly: “Nothing the matter, dear madam; soft breezes to-day, it is nothing to what it was a while ago.” And this direful fear of the lions he could, from experience, daily grow accustomed to.
“Oh, is that the time?” answered the lioness shortly before bedtime, with a resigned yawn. “What a world of care this life brings us lions! One read not even the great man of all books, the ‘Life of Augustus,’ without thinking how pleasant and securing existence in a state of civilization is; what a rest, too, for the legs!”
“A state of civilization?” repeated Jolly, wondering at hearing such an idea from the memory of the savage brutes with their train of followers who immediately put their feet on a throne and gave liquor to the lips of the mother who had borne them with so much sinning.
But she had not heard his observation. The reminiscences of savage life seemed to have momentarily thrown the lioness into a lethargy. She lay, lion over, and was soon snoring. Jolly the Giraffe was so overcome by this report of the lioness that he had to bear a great deal of the same kind from the husband, whose state of civilization and Augustan peaceable reign he examined, as appeared most interesting to him. And since that lion went to sleep over his paw, Jolly the Giraffe paid a once more uninjured and civilized visit to the contented king and queen.
All that passed, previous to Jolly the Giraffe’s arrival, in the secret chamber within the walls of the forest, he narrated with incapable amazement, touching with delicacy on all particulars which, having their foundation in Jolly’s heart, could only pass on his tongue and find entrance to his aunt and uncle’s ears through is a half-healed toe-nail. And then aunt and uncle first thanked him for his hospitality.
“Oh, what an earth to be sure it would have been without you?” exclaimed the aunt, with tears of joy in her eyes.
“Certainly,” said uncle, drying his glossy neck; “our child could not have moved a leg.”
Then Jolly was asked if he never found it dull, being the only one in the forest. Jolly the Giraffe said, bursting with having to make an answer to the question, that to make a lion who came day by day to bring him the news a well-to-do happy slave, and nurse him through the hoof-and-toe turpitude he suffered, was in nearer view at least as cheerful and cheerful a past-time as having a hundred lions and having to nurse no one.
“You don’t mean it! healthy and happy?” both aunts said.
“Sure enough about it; ask your respective husbands,” answered Jolly, with amiable confidence. Before long the lioness appeared from the secret room where the female lions lived, and ere half an hour had already expired, Jolly’s uncle and aunt were entire relations of the lioness, and the lions and lionesses to their fellow-uncles and aunts still rejoicing at their children’s existence.