“There once was a herd of elephants. Elephants young, elephants old, elephants tall or fat or thin. Elephants like this, that or the other, all different but all happy and all the same colour. All, that is, except Elmer.”
“The elephants were standing absolutely still. Elmer had never seen them so serious before. The more he looked at the serious, silent, still, standing elephants, the more he wanted to laugh.”
“Just as Amos had once felt, all alone in the middle of the ocean, Boris felt now, lying alone on the shore. He was sure he would die. And just as he was preparing to die, Amos came racing back with two of the biggest elephants he could find.”
“He looked back at Amos on the elephant’s head. Tears were rolling down the great whale’s cheeks. The tiny mouse had tears in his eyes too. ‘Goodbye, dear friend,’ squeaked Amos. ‘Goodbye, dear friend,’ rumbled Boris, and he disappeared in the waves. They knew they might never meet again. They knew they would never forget each other.”
″‘Perhaps the elephant will turn back into a white hen,’ murmured Delphine. ‘After all, she only did it for the game. When we’ve stopped playing Noah’s Ark there won’t be any reason for her to go on being an elephant.‘”
“If the elephant had been able to get out, Father and Mother would certainly have been surprised at finding him wandering round the house, because there was no such animal in the village.”
“But in spite of all their pleading, the elephant was determined never to be a little white hen again.
‘It isn’t that I want to be unfriendly,’ he said, ‘but I think it’s much more fun being an elephant.‘”
“She thought she was still just a little hen, perched up very high, near the ceiling. But then she found that she had a trunk and ivory tusks, and four huge feet, and a thick, rough skin in which there were still a few white feathers.”
Ohe, little one. Art thou there? Well, I will tell thee, for thou hast a cool head. They will dance, and it behooves thy father, who has swept all the hills of all the elephants, to double-chain his pickets to-night.