M
ARCH winds had come and gone; April’s showers were over; May’s buds had opened into flower; and the June sun was shining on the pleasant fields, when John Dolittle at last got back to his own country.
 
But he did not yet go home to Puddleby. First he went traveling through the land with the pushmi-pullyu in a gipsy-wagon, stopping at all the country-fairs. And there, with the acrobats on one side of them and the Punch-and-Judy show on the other, they would hang out a big sign which read, “Come and See the Marvelous Two-Headed Animal from the Jungles of Africa. Admission Sixpence.”
 
And the pushmi-pullyu would stay inside the wagon, while the other animals would lie about[175] underneath. The Doctor sat in a chair in front taking the sixpences and smiling on the people as they went in; and Dab-Dab was kept busy all the time scolding him because he would let the children in for nothing when she wasn’t looking.
 
And menagerie-keepers and circus-men came and asked the Doctor to sell them the strange creature, saying they would pay a tremendous lot of money for him. But the Doctor always shook his head and said,
 
“No. The pushmi-pullyu shall never be shut up in a cage. He shall be free always to come and go, like you and me.”
 
Many curious sights and happenings they saw in this wandering life; but they all seemed quite ordinary after the great things they had seen and done in foreign lands. It was very interesting at first, being sort of part of a circus; but after a few weeks they all got dreadfully tired of it and the Doctor and all of them were longing to go home.
 
the menagerie
“The Doctor sat in a chair in front”
But so many people came flocking to the little wagon and paid the sixpence to go inside and[176]
[177] see the pushmi-pullyu that very soon the Doctor was able to give up being a showman.
 
And one fine day, when the hollyhocks were in full bloom, he came back to Puddleby a rich man, to live in the little house with the big garden.
 
And the old lame horse in the stable was glad to see him; and so were the swallows who had already built their nests under the eaves of his roof and had young one............