Page:I Know a Secret (1927).pdf/145

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

was very alluring. Just about that time the seals were being fed, and everyone else went to watch; I was left alone with the two children. Of course I was on the floor, as I am not allowed to jump up on the railings. I was trying to warn them not to climb over too far when Sistina remarked "Take a bath with funny duckie" and slipped inside the rail. Lannie followed her, and the two began trotting round and round the inside rim just as the penguins had been doing.

I looked anxiously for Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel, but they were over at the other side of the building admiring the Groupers fish. And then, to my amazement, I saw the two penguins, each one wearing one of the children's straw hats, calmly climb over the rail and flop down onto the floor. Toddling about, with their little outstretched flippers and the big straw hats, they looked exactly like a smaller Lannie and Sistina.

About this time Uncle Felix began to realize it was getting late. And just then he and Aunt Isabel felt something cool and moist slipped into their fingers. Looking down, in the half darkness of the Aquarium, all they saw were large straw hats and small dark flippers, which they naturally thought were very grimy hands.