“You’re not still fretting over dropping the balls at rehearsal, are you, chum?” Bimmy asked. Audie had been uncharacteristically quiet on the stroll back to the hotel. She pulled Audie out of the path of a businessman briskly swinging a large valise as he strode past.

“It’s not that.” Audie was on the verge of confessing one of her secrets to Bimmy, but she bit back the words. It was one thing to assume the risk for herself; she could not involve her sweet friend. “I was merely wondering how everything was going back at Miss Maisie’s.”

“I’m sure the triplets are managing just fine,” Bimmy assured her, now tugging Audie out of the way of a pair of sturdy matrons, both of whom tsk-tsked at the girls as they passed. “I don’t think I would ever get used to all the people if I lived here.”

“People?” Audie nearly collided with a pram. The nanny pushing it deftly steered around her.

“Your mind really is far away,” Bimmy said. “Are you sure there isn’t something you’d like to chat about?”

Again, Audie felt the temptation to share. Bimmy had loads and loads of circus experience. And circuses had to transport items of all shapes and sizes. “Oh, sometimes my mind gets taken with the oddest notions.” Audie did her best to act as if discussing the most trivial of concerns. She would come at this through the back door. “For example, how on earth does our friend Herring get moved from town to town?”

This was familiar ground to Bimmy. “Well, the big circuses have their own special rail cars, like rolling cages, that the wild cats and such ride in. But a seal like Herring could travel in a smaller cage, even in a baggage car.”

Trains were a logical choice. But also very public. How would one hide an elephant, though small, using that mode of transportation? “But, Bimmy, what if the circus was a lesser one? Or what if it were traveling to a town without train service?”

The girls held their noses as they passed a street sweeper at work. Audie did not envy that poor street sweeper. In one quick glance, she counted over a dozen horses carrying cabs and wagons up one side of the street and down the other.

Once they were safely past the odiferous pile of horse droppings, Bimmy removed her fingers from her nose to point. “See those cart horses there?”

Audie followed Bimmy’s fingers. “Bees and bonnets! They’re huge.” Two magnificent creatures, muscles rippling as they worked in unison, steadily pulled a wagon heaped with large barrels labeled MAGIC CITY SOUR PICKLES.

“They’re Percherons,” Bimmy explained. “Bred to carry large loads. When we were in the Barley and Bingham Circus, they had a stable of them. Each pair carried a cage on wheels.”

Audie studied the horses and the wagon they pulled. The horses appeared to haul the loaded wagon with ease, clip-clopping down the street. “What kind of animals were in that circus?” she asked.

Bimmy squinched up her face, remembering. “The usual. A lion, two tigers. A bear, the cart horses, of course, and some performing horses. A dog act.” She tapped her forefinger to her mouth, thinking. “Oh yes. And Pearl.”

“Pearl?”

“She was the gentlest creature,” Bimmy said. “Her trainer used to let me ride on her back in the big-top parade.”

“So Pearl was a horse,” Audie guessed.

“No. An elephant.” Bimmy gestured with her arms. “One of the biggest I’ve ever seen.”

Audie’s heart skittered in her chest. She did her best to reply calmly. “And two horses could pull Pearl’s cage?”

“Easily.” Bimmy took Audie’s arm as they approached the curb. A hansom cab barreled past, not even slowing for the girls or any of the other pedestrians. “It looks safe to cross now,” she said.

Audie felt lighthearted as she strolled next to Bimmy the rest of the way to the hotel. Surely there was a wagon master in this city willing to give a baby elephant a ride. She wiggled the toes in her left boot. If necessary, the gold coin in that boot could cover any expenses incurred.

Now all she needed was to find a haven for Baby. It was a daunting task, to be sure. But hadn’t that Mr. Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right”? That’s why she’d sent the telegram to Miss Maisie’s. One never knew where answers might lie.

Audie was choosing to think she could do this thing.

Heartened and inspired, she took Bimmy’s hand. “I think this calls for ice cream!” She led the way into a nearby drugstore.

“What are we celebrating?” Not that Bimmy needed a reason to eat ice cream.

Audie thought fast. “A successful mission!”

“It’s not over yet,” Bimmy reminded her. “Maybe it’s bad luck to celebrate too soon.”

“Nonsense.” Audie hopped up on one of the red stools by the soda fountain. She patted the seat next to her. “Nothing could possibly go wrong now.”