We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child following after--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at ten years--a little boy's first love? We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove not an inch from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite surprising. "That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie?--and I wish he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young lady's side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with his cheeks roseate with blushes. As he heard this Billy idled along the edge of the tank for a moment, then faced about and said: "P'raps I will some day. Where do you live?" "I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there, too, now--she's my cousin. Where d'you live?" "Oh! I live close by--right on that big green square, where I guess the nurse takes you once in awhile," said Billy patronizingly. Then, looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out there." "No; Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and I've just come to visit him." "Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking-stove--for real fire--and blocks, and a ball with a string." Billy, who belonged to a club for the practise of the great American game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battist among the I. G. B. B. 0., or "Infant Giants," smiled from an altitude upon Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.