"That's my elefink! Mine has the turban."
"And there's mine!"
"Mine's beckoning me with his trunk."
"Mine is trumpeting for me to come to him."
"Even if Mama and Papa do not allow us to keep the elefinks, maybe the elefinks will keep us!"
The elephants' invitation to come out and play was irresistible. Elfi and Heinrich ran outside.
"Children! Children!" called their mother. "You have not even washed your faces to greet the day! Come back!"
But by the time Helga had run outside after them, the children were quite a distance away, riding on the elephants. Volker came running out too.
"So much has changed since we left just a few weeks ago on our trip ... our home taken over by Swami Namechangeananda and his crew ... our children making friends with some young elephants ... Come on, we'd better try to catch up."
Before long a much bigger elephant came along and knelt down for them to get on.
"A sympathetic mother, helping us catch up," said Helga, getting on without a second thought.
"How can you tell?" asked Volker.
"Oh, I just can," said Helga with a knowing smile, and sure enough, the mother elephant took them straight to a pond where the young elephants were giving the little humans a shower with their trunks.
"They must have heard you say we had not washed our faces," said Elfie, water streaming down her face. "This is much better than being washed with a scratchy old face cloth."
"You have not had breakfast either!" said Helga, who liked things to be orderly.
At this, the little elephant who always did cute things with his ears when he heard the word Om went over to a chest, hidden behind a rock, and brought it back. The elephant with the binoculars opened it.
Helga gasped. Inside was a complete breakfast, enough for both humans and elephants. There was a big flask of fresh buttermilk, and a box labeled (with quite young handwriting) Ramana Munch, and another labeled Krishna Krunch.
The children tried it and declared it the tastiest breakfast they had ever eaten.
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