THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Very likely.  Let us drop the subject.  Pardon me for embarrassing you.  I should not have mentioned it.

ZOO.  What does embarrassing mean?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Well, really!  I should have thought that so natural and common a condition would be understood as long as human nature lasted.  To embarrass is to bring a blush to the cheek.

ZOO.  What is a blush?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [amazed] Dont you blush???

ZOO.  Never heard of it.  We have a word flush, meaning a rush of blood to the skin.  I have noticed it in my babies, but not after the age of two.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Your babies!!!  I fear I am treading on very delicate ground; but your appearance is extremely youthful; and if I may ask how many—?

ZOO.  Only four as yet.  It is a long business with us.  I specialize in babies.  My first was such a success that they made me go on.  I—­

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [reeling on the bollard] Oh! dear!

ZOO.  Whats the matter?  Anything wrong?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  In Heaven’s name, madam, how old are you?

ZOO.  Fifty-six.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  My knees are trembling.  I fear I am really ill. 
Not so young as I was.

ZOO.  I noticed that you are not strong on your legs yet.  You have many of the ways and weaknesses of a baby.  No doubt that is why I feel called on to mother you.  You certainly are a very silly little Daddy.

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN [stimulated by indignation] My name, I repeat, is Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow, O.M.

ZOO.  What a ridiculously long name!  I cant call you all that.  What did your mother call you?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  You recall the bitterest struggles of my childhood.  I was sensitive on the point.  Children suffer greatly from absurd nicknames.  My mother thoughtlessly called me Iddy Toodles.  I was called Iddy until I went to school, when I made my first stand for children’s rights by insisting on being called at least Joe.  At fifteen I refused to answer to anything shorter than Joseph.  At eighteen I discovered that the name Joseph was supposed to indicate an unmanly prudery because of some old story about a Joseph who rejected the advances of his employer’s wife:  very properly in my opinion.  I then became Popham to my family and intimate friends, and Mister Barlow to the rest of the world.  My mother slipped back into Iddy when her faculties began to fail her, poor woman; but I could not resent that, at her age.

ZOO.  Do you mean to say that your mother bothered about you after you were ten?

THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.  Naturally, madam.  She was my mother.  What would you have had her do?

ZOO.  Go on to the next, of course.  After eight or nine children become quite uninteresting, except to themselves.  I shouldnt know my two eldest if I met them.