Jerry tried all the next day and the next to think what it was that the picture of the elephant jumping the fence almost made him remember, but it just wouldn't come and finally he gave up trying. After playing with Kathleen until Mother 'Larkey put her in the crib for her afternoon nap, he wandered out towards the woodshed from behind which he heard the voices of Danny and Celia Jane.
On the way an idea popped all of a sudden into his mind. The dazzling splendor of it first brought him to a dead halt and then set him running breathlessly to join the Mullarkey children. He found them all gathered about Danny, hungrily watching him eat a green apple.
"Couldn't we play circus!" he exclaimed, in eager excitement at the idea that had come to him.
"We could if we wanted to," replied Danny, in that superior, ardor-dampening way of his.
Jerry felt his enthusiasm for the idea oozing out of his bare toes. "I—Don't we want to, Danny?"
"Oh, yes, let's!" cried Nora eagerly. "I'm tired of ante-over and run-sheep-run and pump-pump-pull-away—"
"And hidin'-go-seek and tree-tag," interrupted Celia Jane. She turned to Jerry. "How do you play circus?"
"You just—justplayit," he answered. "'Maginary you're an el'funt jumpin' a fence and all."
"I'll be the el'funt!" cried Danny.
"I want to be the el'funt," objected Chris.
"The el'funt's mine," Jerry asserted and he closed his lips tightly. Danny didn't have any right to that elephant. "I saw it first," he added.
"I said 'I'll be the el'funt' first, didn't I?" asked Danny.
"Jerry orter have first choice," said Nora, the conciliator, "seein' it was him thought of playin' circus."
"I guess I can jump the highest, can't I?" Danny asked in a tone that said as plain as day that that settled the matter.
"It's my el'funt!" insisted Jerry.
"You always take first choice," Chris complained.
"You could take turns about being el'funt," Nora suggested.
Jerry wanted with all his soul to play that sublime elephant jumping the fence and he summoned up all his courage. "I won't play," cried he, with a suspicious quiver of his lips. "I won't! I won't!"
"I'll let you be el'funt part of the time," Danny promised, "just to keep you from cryin'."
"I ain't goin' to cry," returned Jerry hotly. "I ain't!"
"We can't have a circus with just a el'funt," said Celia Jane.
"Of course, we can't," said Danny decisively and turned to Jerry. "What else'll we have?"
"Couldn't we have more'n one el'funt?" Jerry asked hopefully.
"What'd we want with more'n oneel'funt?" Danny queried in scorn. "I guess one el'funt's enough for one circus. Anyway, we want something besides el'funts."
"What?" asked Jerry. "I ain't never seen a circus."
"No more have I," replied Danny.
"Can't you 'maginary something?" asked Celia Jane.
"We could ''maginary things'," interposed Nora, "but they might not be in a circus."
"There's more'n one circus picture up," said Jerry. "Darn Darner said there was one at Jenkins' corner and one on Jeffreys' barn. P'raps they'll tell us what's in a circus."
"Of course," said Danny. "It's funny I didn't think of that. It's usually me who thinks of everything. I'll be the first one at Jenkins' corner," and he was off at a run.
Thereupon they all followed at full speed. Any other rate of progress was too slow for them. Jerry ran as hard as he could, leaving Celia Jane behind and keeping right at Nora's side. It was more than a quarter of a mile to Jenkins' corner and Jerry felt that his legs were ready to give out and send himsprawling in the street before he got there, but he kept running just the same. Celia Jane tagged along, far in the rear, and called to Jerry to wait for her, but a boy couldn't stop and wait for a girl without Danny's making fun of him, so, as much as Jerry would have liked to rest, he kept pantingly on. He was glad to plump down flat on the ground in front of the billboard and rest till Nora and Celia Jane arrived.
"Whoopee! I'll be the clown!" exclaimed Chris, pointing to the poster which showed trapeze performers turning somersaults in the air, a clown playing ringmaster to a dancing white pony and a girl walking a tight rope.
"I'll be the dancin' pony!" cried Celia Jane.
"I'll be the rope-walker," Nora said.
"And what'll I be?" asked Jerry plaintively, feeling left entirely out in the cold.
"Why didn't you speak up and grab onto something before they were all taken?" asked Danny. "You've got a tongue, ain't you?"
"He could swing up in the air hanging by his hands," Celia Jane suggested.
"We ain't got no net like they have in the picture to catch him if he falls," Nora objected.
"That would be too dangerous for us kids to try," Danny stated. "Maybe the picture on Jeffreys' barn will suggest something."
Again they were off at a run. It was not far to the barn, where they all squatted on the ground, nonplussed at the picture of half a dozen funny little animals balancing toy balloons on their noses.
"What are they?" Jerry asked.
"They're some kind of a fish," returned Danny promptly.
"Fish nothing!" exclaimed Chris. "Who ever saw a fish with hair on it? They're some kind of animal."
"They've got fins," retorted Danny. "I'd like to know what kind of animals's got fins. Tell me that."
"I don't know," Chris confessed, "but what kind of fish has hair?"
"This kind," said Danny authoritatively.
"Mebbe it's half fish and half animal," Jerry ventured.
"Who ever heard—" Danny began but was interrupted by Nora.
"It tells under the picture what they are," she said. "Trained s-e-a-l-s, seals. That's what rich women get their coats from."
"Then Jerry can be a trained seal," said Danny. "He can have a ball of carpet rags for a balloon to balance on his nose."
"I don't think I could," Jerry protested. "I know it would fall off."
"Not if you practise enough," returned Danny. "Besides, that's all that's left for you. I guess if one seal can throw it to another and that seal catch it on its nose like it does in the picture, you ought to be able tobalanceit onyournose. All you'll have to do is to lie on your stummick on the ground and throw back your head."
So it was decided that Jerry should play the part of a trained seal in their circus. Mother 'Larkey got out a ball of carpet rags, when they reached home, for Jerry to balance on his nose in place of a balloon, and gave Danny an old green wrapper, just ready to be cut up into carpet rags, out of which to make his elephant costume. She made Chris a clown costume out of a piece of old whiteskirt upon which she sewed large dots of red and blue cloth.
The two following days were busy ones for Jerry if not quite so happy as for the Mullarkey children. He had made up his mind, after practising until his back, chest and neck ached from throwing his head back to balance the ball of carpet rags on his nose, that he didn't like trained seals and wasn't going to care to be one at the circus. Chris's clown costume was finished and looked very much like a white union suit miles too big for him.
Nora had become quite proficient at walking the tight rope, stretched between two poles in the yard about ten feet apart and two feet from the ground,ifshe remembered to keep one end of her balancing pole touching the ground all the time. Mrs. Mullarkey had decided that Celia Jane didn't need any costume to play the part of the dancing pony except her good, white dress that she probably wouldn't ruin this time as all she had to do was to dance.
Danny was having more than a peck of trouble. His elephant costume had all sortsof queer mishaps. He wanted to make it all himself, even to the sewing, and he couldn't sew for sour apples, as Nora very readily told him. Two small palm-leaf fans, fastened to an old cap of his father's so that they flopped with every movement, served as the elephant's ears, while out of an old brown coat sleeve Danny had fashioned what passed for an elephant's trunk. He fastened it with a string to the visor of the cap.
Danny was stuffing the leg of an old pair of blue trousers with straw, flattening it out until it bore a faint resemblance to the paddle-shaped tail of a beaver.
"What is that you're making?" Jerry asked.
"Why, that's the el'funt's tail!" said Danny. "Anybody could tell that."
He held it proudly up, displaying it in all its blue glory.
"El'funts' tails are small like a rope," Jerry remarked.
Danny laughed derisively. "Much you know about it! I guess a el'funt's about the biggest animal in the world and it wouldn't have a little ole tail like a rope."
"They are little, like a rope," Jerry insisted.
"How do you know they are?" asked Danny. "Just tell me how you know anything about it."
"I don't know, but I know," Jerry said, feeling all his obstinacy aroused by Danny's air of conscious superiority.
"There, you just said you didn't know," Celia Jane interposed, going to her elder brother's aid, as she always did in a dispute with Jerry.
"I didn't neither," asseverated Jerry.
"You said you didn't know," insisted Celia Jane.
"I don't know how I know," said Jerry, "but I know el'funts have little tails—like a rope."
"Have you ever been to a circus?" asked Chris.
"Not that I remember."
"Have you ever seen a el'funt?" pursued Danny.
"N-n-no, but it kind of seems as if I almost had."
"I guess you'd know if you had seen a el'funt, wouldn't you?"
"Y-y-yes," responded Jerry doubtfully.
"Then if you ain't ever been to a circus or seen a el'funt, I guess you don't know what you are talking about."
"El'funts' tails are little, like a rope," Jerry insisted.
"Like a cow's tail?" asked Celia Jane.
Jerry nodded assent. "Only they haven't so much hair on the end," he added.
"A el'funt's a hundred times as big as a cow, I guess," interposed Danny, "an' it wouldn't have a little tail like a cow. I guess I know more about it than you do. I'm older, ain't I?"
"Yes," Jerry admitted, "but they are little."
Nora now interposed. "Why don't you go see the picture of the elephant jumpin' the fence and find out?" she asked.
"Of course," said Chris. "The picture'll show whether they're small like a rope or great big ones."
"I'll beat you there," challenged Danny, as he dropped the flat, beaver-like elephant's tail and darted at a run out of the woodshed, followed by the others. As they lined up in front of the gaudy, delectable poster, therecame a simultaneous gasp of amazement from all of them.
"Why, it ain't got no tail at all!" exclaimed Celia Jane.
True enough, there was no tail in evidence, as the elephant seemed to be headed straight towards them. Jerry flushed as they all turned and looked accusingly at him.
"Yah!" exclaimed Danny. "Mr. Smarty Know-it-all didn't know so much, after all!"
"Mebbe you just can't see it, but it's there," suggested Nora.
"That's so," Danny reluctantly admitted. "A el'funt's so big that when you stand right in front of it, its tail might not show at all, no matter how big it was."
"A little tail wouldn't," Jerry said quickly.
"A big one wouldn't either," Celia Jane asserted, taking sides against Jerry. "A el'funt's enough bigger to hide its tail."
"If it was very big it would show," said Jerry.
"The el'funt I play is goin' to have a tail all right," Danny informed the children collectively. "I ain't goin' to all the work of makin' a tail and then not wear it. I guess a el'funt's got some kind of a tail, anyway."
The first and, as it turned out, the last performance of their circus took place that afternoon. Jerry felt a thrill of expectancy as they began to don their costumes. Once he thought he almost heard again that low, cheerful strumming that had seemed to beat upon his ears when he first saw the poster of the elephant jumping the fence. He said nothing about it and soon lost all recollection of the rollicking strains in the anticipation of the circus joys that he was about to behold.
Chris and Danny got into their costumes in the woodshed while Celia Jane went into the house and put on her white dress, the one she wore on Sundays. Mrs. Mullarkey had decided that Nora didn't need any special costume to be a rope-walker and that all Jerry needed to be a trained seal was a sort of apron made out of a gunny sack to protect his clothes while he crawled about on hisstomach. He did not put this on at once but watched Danny getting into the skin of the elephant, wishing with all his heart that he might be the elephant, even if its tail was big and flat instead of being small like a rope.
It might have proved a mirth-provoking elephant to others had there been others present to see it, but to Jerry's eager imagination there was nothing laughable about it. The green wrapper hung most loosely about Danny's small, slim figure, great folds almost touching the ground, while the brown trunk and the blue, beaver-like tail waggled and wiggled about until they met between the front and hind legs of the elephant.
There was something about that awkward elephant that made Jerry feel all friendly inside and struck the chord of envy in his heart. He was not at all inclined to laugh when the cap with the very floppy palm-leaf-fan-ears attached fell off, as Danny started to gallop around the woodshed on all fours to see if the costume was all right.
Celia Jane now came dancing out of the house in her white frock, her hair loose and flowing for the pony's mane, while pinnedto the back of her dress, at the waist line, was her mother's switch to represent the pony's tail. The strands of gray in the black hair did not match with the brown of the pony's mane, but that presented no difficulties to the imagination of the circus performers.
"Come on!" Celia Jane called. "Let's play circus. I'm all ready."
"Wait a minute, can't you?" complained Danny. "I guess I'm the head of this circus. I've got the biggest part and I ain't quite ready. Just hold your horses."
"Whoa!" cried Celia Jane. "I'm just one pony. Get up!" She flapped her side with one hand, as though urging a horse to quicken his pace, and galloped out back of the woodshed where the circus "tent" had been set up and began prancing and dancing and preening about. Jerry was torn between desire to watch her graceful whirling and pirouetting and to keep fascinated eyes on the green elephant. He just had to stay and see if the elephant's ears fell off again. But Danny was equal to the occasion and tied the cap on with a piece of string.
"Celia Jane, you just come back here,"he called. "I guess the elephant has to enter the circus ahead of the horse. Horses always get scared of el'funts unless they're behind where they can see them. How do you expect us to parade if you're there already?"
"All right," replied Celia Jane and came prancing back into the woodshed, "but hurry."
"I'll be first," said Danny, "an—"
"An' I'll be second!" cried Chris.
"I'm third!" Nora and Celia Jane exclaimed together.
Jerry said nothing. He knew where his place would be,—the very tail end of the parade.
"Boom!" sang out Danny and again, "Boom!"
"What's that for?" asked Chris.
"It's the music so that the people will know the circus is about to begin," replied Danny. "They always have music for the parade an' everything. Darn Darner said so."
"Let's sing then," suggested Nora.
"Sing what?" queried Danny crossly, seeing a threat to diminish his importance in the circus.
"We might sing 'Heigho, the cherry-o,'" said Celia Jane.
"'I Went to the Animal Fair' will be much more appropriate," Nora suggested.
"All right, sing," consented Danny, "but the crowd's gettin' restless; I can hear them stampin' and whistlin'!"
"I'll start it," said Nora. "All ready."
Thus the parade started and entered the main circus tent, which consisted of a pole in the center, with no canvas at all, to the strain of,
I went to the animal fair;The birds and the beasts were there;The little raccoon, by the light of the moon,Was combing his auburn hair.The monkey he got drunk,Ran up the elephant's trunk,The elephant sneezed and fell on his kneesAnd what became of the monkey-monkey-monk?
I went to the animal fair;The birds and the beasts were there;The little raccoon, by the light of the moon,Was combing his auburn hair.The monkey he got drunk,Ran up the elephant's trunk,The elephant sneezed and fell on his kneesAnd what became of the monkey-monkey-monk?
Jerry tried to sing, too, but he had a very hard time, for he couldn't crawl as fast as the others walked and the carpet-rag balloon wouldn't stay balanced on his nose but kept rolling off to the ground. The rest of the parade was halfway around the ring (marked by a circle of sawdust which Danny had made after sawing wood energetically for half aday to get enough sawdust) when the trained seal had just reached the main entrance.
"Run and catch up with the parade," came Danny's voice through the circus music. "We can't have the parade split in two that way."
The trained seal jumped up on his hind feet carrying the balloon under a forefoot, and ran until he caught up with Celia Jane; then he plumped down on his stomach again.
Jerry was very hot and flushed and the muscles of his back and neck ached. He tried desperately to balance the ball of carpet rags on his nose, but it kept rolling off, and Jerry had to scramble after it and the parade was soon away ahead again. In desperation, he held the balloon on his nose with one hand and tried to creep ahead with but one arm and his legs as motive power. His progress was slower than ever.
He could see Danny—or, rather, the elephant—stalking majestically ahead to the strains of "I Went to the Animal Fair," his trunk and his tail wobbling about until they met under his body, and the palm-leaf ears flopping with every step. Jerry felt hurtand out of sorts as he panted from the exertion of trying to crawl on one arm. He had suggested playing circus and he ought to have been allowed to play the part of the elephant. There was no fun in being a trained seal balancing a balloon on its nose, as there was in being a green elephant with floppy ears and wobbly tail and trunk. It would serve that greedy Danny just right if he should refuse to play in his old circus.
Jerry saw that he was again falling far in the rear and tried to scramble on faster. Then, of course, the balloon fell off and Jerry was almost in tears as he jumped after it.
Then the music of the parade came to a sudden end. The rest of the performers were at the main entrance, having marched clear around the ring while Jerry had not covered much more than half the distance.
"Can't you hurry any?" asked Danny. "You're spoilin' the circus all the time, 'way behind like that."
"I can't crawl as fast as you can walk," answered Jerry, in a voice that threatened to break into a sob.
"I guess a trained seal had orter crawl asfast as a man can walk," said Danny, "or how could they have them in circuses?"
"I'm comin' as fast as I can," returned Jerry. "I wish you'd just try bein' a trained seal for a time and see how fast you can crawl on your stummick." Jerry rose to his hands and knees, holding the ball of carpet rags in his teeth, and progressed much faster.
"Who ever heard of a trained seal carryin' a balloon in his teeth?" Danny protested. "I guess his teeth would go through the balloon and let all the air out."
"Let's not have no trained seal," pleaded Jerry. "It ain't no fun."
"We got to have a trained seal," replied Danny.
"You be it then," suggested Jerry, "an' let me be the el'funt. You said I could part of the time."
"I'm going to be the el'funt," proclaimed Danny. "The circus ain't even begun yet."
"I won't be a trained seal, so I won't," said Jerry, at last catching up with the parade. "The balloon won't stay on my nose and my neck hurts and I've cut my hand on a piece of glass or a splinter or somethingtill it bleeds." He held up one hand with a little trickle of blood on it. "I want to be something else. I won't play if I've got to be a trained seal any more."
"All right," Danny acquiesced, after a moment's thought, "you can be the audience. We need an audience to clap their hands and holler so's we'll know the crowd likes us and we're doin' all right. This circus can get along without no trained seal."
"I don't want to be the audience," replied Jerry dismally, seeing that, as the audience, he would have nothing to do with the circus.
Nora now put in a word. "Let's count out," she said, "and the one who's counted out will be the audience."
"I guess not," replied Danny emphatically, but after Celia Jane had whispered something in his ear, he considered a moment, looked at Jerry and then whispered something to Nora.
Nora looked at Jerry and counted on her fingers rapidly. Then she counted on her fingers again, after a quick glance at Danny. She nodded to Danny, who said:
"All right, whoever's counted out willbe the audience. You count out, Nora." Starting with Danny and pointing to a child in rotation with each word, Nora chanted and counted:
"'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.All good children go to heaven.O-u-t spells out.'"
Her finger was pointing at Jerry.
"Jerry's out!" cried Celia Jane, skipping about. "He's the audience!"
"I won't be no audience," said Jerry.
"You'll have to be," asserted Danny, "you was counted out."
"I won't be! I won't play!" cried Jerry. He threw down his carpet-rag balloon, took off the gunny-sack apron, tossed it on top of the balloon and ran to the house.
"Cry baby!" shouted Danny after him, but Jerry did not even wait to refute that charge, for he knew he was in danger of proving it if he remained out there a moment longer.
Jerry felt the hot tears start to come as the screen door slammed after him. He dashed them angrily out of his eyes and ran up the stairs to the room he shared with Danny and Chris. If Mother 'Larkey had been at homeand not away sewing for Mrs. Moran, he would have gone to her in his bitter disappointment, sure of finding comfort in her arms as he had so many times.
It was not fair for Danny to take the part of the elephant away from him and not even let him play it for a teeny little while, as he had promised he would. For two cents he would run away as he had from the man with the—the scarred face. He looked quickly around, half-fearful, as always, thatthatman might have learned where he was and be lurking around the corner ready to pounce upon him. The room was empty and he took a long breath. He would run away if it weren't for Mother 'Larkey and for little Kathleen who always cried when he even said anything about running away. He heard the screen door slam shut after a time and Nora's gentle footsteps coming up the stairway. He turned his back to the door.
"Jerry," pleaded Nora's coaxing voice, "come on out and play. Danny didn't mean anything."
Jerry did not answer. He did not even look around.
"Danny wants you to play with us," continued Nora. "Won't you?"
"No," Jerry replied at length.
"Why won't you?"
"He didn't play fair."
"I'll count over again, Jerry, so's I'll be the—" The voice stopped and then continued chokily, "—the audience."
Jerry knew what it cost her to say that, but he hardened his heart. "I don't want to play no more," he said.
"Please do, Jerry. I'm sorry I didn't play fair, Jerry."
"I won't," pouted Jerry. "He said I could be the el'funt some of the time."
"Mebbe he'll let you after while, after he's tired of playin' it," suggested Nora, without any great fervor of conviction in her voice. "I'll ask him to."
With that Nora left the room. He wondered if she could persuade Danny to let him be the elephant part of the time. He might play then, if Danny coaxed him to.
He heard the screen slam after Nora and waited, listening for it to go slam-bang much louder. That would mean that Danny wascoming to let him play elephant. Danny always let the door go shut slam-bang. He waited a long time and then he heard the shouting of the children. They were playing circus without him! Danny wouldn't let him be the elephant. Very well, if they didn't want him around and wouldn't let him play with them, he would run away. Danny would be sorry then. Perhaps he would be killed on a railway track or something and Danny would cry over his dead body, he'd be so sorry he didn't let him be the elephant.
That thought comforted him and he began gathering up the things he wanted to take with him. There was the fur cap that Mother 'Larkey had made for him out of an old muff of hers, the winter before. He couldn't leave that behind, nor yet the overcoat which she had made for him out of an old coat of her husband's just after Mr. Mullarkey had died. The other things he didn't care much about. Yes, after all, he would take the ragged, fuzzy cloth dog that Kathleen had insisted on giving him. The dog had lost an ear, a forepaw and one eye; still he cherished it because Kathleenhad given it to him of her own free will, something that Danny nor Chris nor Celia Jane nor even Nora had ever done.
He would wear the cap and overcoat, even if it was summer; then he wouldn't get so tired carrying them. He put on the fur cap, pulling it well down over his ears, and slipped into the overcoat. Slowly he took up the woolly dog and started down the stairs. Then he remembered the red mittens which a lady had brought him at Christmas, and returned to get them. He put them on carefully, smoothing them over his hands, and then went downstairs and out by the front door, prepared for any kind of weather.
He was going to run away again, as he had from that man with the scarred face. He heard the children shouting at their play and decided he would first watch them a minute and perhaps let Danny know what he had driven him into doing. He went down the alley which led past the woodshed, behind which the circus performance was going on, and stopped to watch with his face wedged between two pickets of the fence.
Nora was walking the rope slowly. Shewas doing it very well as long as she kept one end of the balancing pole on the ground, but when she got halfway across the rope, the end of the pole was so far behind that she couldn't steady herself with it. She tried to drag it up even with her and in so doing lost her balance and had to jump to the ground. As she straightened up, she saw Jerry's face between the palings.
"There's Jerry!" she called to Danny.
"Thought you would play, after all," Danny remarked.
"I'm not," said Jerry.
"He's got his cap on!" laughed Celia Jane. "What've you got your cap on for, Jerry?"
"And your overcoat?" said Nora.
"And your mittens?" chimed in Chris. "You ain't cold, are you?"
"I'm running away," Jerry responded, addressing no one in particular. He tried to say it indifferently as though it were a matter of everyday occurrence, this running away, but in spite of himself a note of pride crept into his voice. None of them had ever run away.
"Running away!" gasped Celia Jane in an awed voice.
"Oh, Jerry, don't!" pleaded Nora.
Danny stared at him in open-mouthed amazement.
"I'm running away," Jerry repeated and sat down on the ground by the fence where he had an unobstructed view of the circus.
The Mullarkey children regarded Jerry for a long time without a word.
Jerry, knowing that for once he had Danny at a disadvantage, wanted to prolong that pleasant sensation.
"I'm running away," he repeated, without stirring from the fence.
"What'll mother do?" Danny asked from underneath the elephant's trunk and Jerry knew from the earnestness of his voice that Danny was scared. "What do you want to run away for?"
"Because," replied Jerry.
"That's no reason," Chris stated.
"What'll become of you?" Danny asked, drawing closer to the fence, the elephant's beaver-like blue tail dragging forlornly on the ground.
"I dunno," Jerry replied carelessly.
"You won't find many folks who'd bring you home like father did and keep you," Danny pursued.
"I'm going to run away," was all that Jerry replied.
"What'll you do for something to eat?" demanded Chris, in a tone that showed admiration for a boy not afraid to run away, even if he wasn't a Mullarkey.
"I dunno," said Jerry, "but I'll find a way."
"Come on an' play, Jerry," coaxed Danny, "an' you can be the el'funt the next time we play circus."
"I want to be the el'funt this time," said Jerry.
"You can't be this time, because you're too little for the costume to fit you," Danny told him. "It'll have to be cut down an' made over for you. It's a little too big for me an' it's awfully hard work actin' as a el'funt would when your skin's so loose it gets in the way of your feet when you walk."
Jerry hadn't thought of that but it looked reasonable to him. He hesitated and Danny, seeing his advantage, was quick to push it.
"Besides, mother wouldn't like it if you ran away. She'd think I was to blame when I'm not at all. I never even once thought of your runnin' away. You thought of it yourself, now didn't you?"
"Yes," Jerry admitted.
"Mother'd think I had done something to you when I ain't, have I?" Danny appealed.
"You wouldn't let me play—" Jerry began but was interrupted by Danny's saying quickly:
"You can next time we play circus, when I've had a chance to make the el'funt skin over for you."
That did not seem inducement enough for Jerry and he decided to continue his interrupted running away. He rose and turned slowly away from the fence and tried to imitate Darn Darner's off-hand style of leave-taking. "Well, so long, fellows," he called nonchalantly over his shoulders, "I must be on my way."
"Good-by, Jerry," said Nora.
"Oh, Jerry! Don't go!" pleaded Celia Jane.
"You stay an' be audience for this circus," said Danny quickly, "an' I'll give you one of my tops."
Jerry returned to the fence. "The one with the red on it?" he asked.
"No, the other one."
"It's broken," Jerry objected.
"An' I'll give you two fishhooks," Danny hurriedly promised, "an' a line an' pole, an' a horseshoe nail."
"The rusty one!" cried Jerry, in a tone that was sarcastic.
Danny hesitated, swallowed quickly and responded, "No, the shiny one."
"I don't want no fishin' pole an' all," said Jerry; "an' the broken top an' the shiny horseshoe ain't enough."
"I'll give you my toy pistol," said Danny.
"The trigger's gone," Jerry objected, "an' a pistol ain't no good without a trigger."
"The golf ball I found in the weeds," Danny offered.
"I don't know how to play golf."
"Aw, be reasonable, Jerry. I can't give you what you want. I bought it with the money I got for mowin' old man Barnes's yard for a month."
"I'll be the audience for your white rabbit," Jerry bargained, "an' I won't run away."
"You want too much," Danny objected. "'Tain't as if I could get another rabbit right away."
"An' then Mother 'Larkey won't think you made me run away," pursued Jerry, pressing home his advantage. "I won't say nothin' to her nohow about that."
Danny did not reply at once and Jerry spoke again.
"You can keep your top an' your shiny horseshoe nail, too."
"You won't say nothin' to mother a-tall?" Danny weakened.
"No," Jerry assured him.
"Cross your heart, hope to die an' spit?"
"Cross my heart, hope to die an' spit," repeated Jerry, suiting the action to the word.
"All right, you can have the ole rabbit. You'll have to feed it, though. I wouldn't raise my finger to feed it, not if it was starvin' to death. I'd got kinda sick of always havin' to feed it whenever I wanted to do something else, anyway."
"All right, I'll be the audience," Jerry promised, "but the rabbit's mine."
"Then go in the house and put away your cap an' coat an' mittens, so's mother won't suspect nothin'. An', Chris, don't you dare ever tell, nor you, Nora, nor you, Celia Jane. I'll get even with you if it takes to my last livin' day if you do."
"We won't ever tell," his brother and sisters assured him.
Jerry flew back to the house, and put away his winter clothes and the cloth dog Kathleen had given him, and then dashed out to the circus ground and climbed upon an old barrel which Danny and Chris had turned upside down for a seat. He kicked his heels against its sides and whistled as best he could as a sign of the audience's impatience for the circus to begin.
"We'll begin all over again," announced Danny and marshaled his three fellow performers back to the woodshed and led them forth in parade to the strains of "I Went to the Animal Fair." Jerry duly applauded the parade and waited for the real performance.
Then the green elephant rose up on his hind legs and with one front leg pushed his trunk to one side while the voice of DannyMullarkey announced, "Ladies and gents, I'm pleased to make you acquainted with Flora, the lady tight-rope walker, who will now walk the tight rope for you an' I hope you'll like her."
This time, by dragging one end of her balancing pole on the ground as she walked forward on the rope, Nora, or, as the circus-master called her, Flora, managed to walk the ten feet to the opposite post without falling off.
Jerry, rejoicing over the possession of the white rabbit, applauded her generously.
"The el'funt will now jump the fence," came the voice of Danny, issuing from the mouth of the green elephant. "Hey, you kids! Get the boards for the fence," he called to Chris and Celia Jane, who had sat down on the ground while Nora walked the rope.
With a front foot, the elephant put his trunk in place and took a curious little huddled run on all fours up to the very low fence made of two boards, together not more than ten inches high, which Chris and Celia Jane held for him, and then half rose on his hind legsand leaped over the fence, palm-leaf-fan-ears flopping and brown trunk and blue tail wobbling. No elephant jumping up into the sky and balancing the moon on the end of his trunk was this, truly, but, Jerry thrilled at the first jump, imagining what it might have been.
"Whee!" trumpeted the elephant as he turned back and jumped the fence again. He seemed to develop a very passion for wheeing and jumping the fence, returning to the charge again and again.
Jerry clapped his hands and kicked the sides of the barrel in approval and laughed at the ungainly antics of the jumping elephant, but by dint of the frequent repetition of the jumping he began to become disappointed that Danny didn't jump higher. He grew tired of the performance before Danny wearied of jumping the fence.
"It's my turn now!" Chris called, after Danny had jumped for the twelfth time. "Come on, Celia Jane."
They dropped the fence and, as there was nothing for the green elephant to jump unless he could clear the tight rope, two feet fromthe ground, Danny perforce gave way to the dancing pony and the clown.
Chris was trying to crack an old whip which he and Danny had made by braiding three strands of leather, with a "cracker" at the end, and Celia Jane was dancing gracefully about the ring, her tail switching and her mane blowing, when the unexpected voice of Darn Darner from the alley brought the circus to a sudden halt.
"Hullo! What do you kids think you're doin'?" he asked, in the gruff voice which he adopted when he wanted to be particularly disagreeable.
Jerry squirmed around on the barrel until he could see Darn. "We're playin' circus," he answered with a feeble, placating smile, before the others had recovered from their surprise.
"Yah! You callthata circus? Chris can't even crack the whip."
"I can, too, sometimes," Chris disputed.
"I'll show you how to do it," Darn offered, clambering over the fence. "Here, give me the whip!"
He took it out of Chris's surprised andreluctant fingers and began circling it over his head and giving it a sudden jerk. It didn't crack at first, but soon he got the knack of it and cracked it loudly as close to Celia Jane's ears and ankles as he could come without touching her.
"Giddap!" he commanded the dancing pony. "Show your paces." That time he tried to crack the whip too near Celia Jane and the end of the lash wound around her leg.
"Oh! Oh!" cried the dancing pony, hopping about on one leg. "That hurt! It ain't no fair makin' it crack so close an' I won't play no more." Half crying from the pain, Celia Jane ran to the house, followed by Nora.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," Darn called to Celia Jane. "The whip must be a little too long, or I wouldn't have sized up the distance wrong." He turned to Danny. "What do you think you are?"
"I'm a el'funt," said Danny proudly, "an' I jump the fence like the circus el'funt."
"An el'funt!" cried Darn, turning his eyes up to the sky. "And he calls that an' el'funt!"
"It is a el'funt," protested Jerry.
Darn Darner laughed derisively.
"You can 'maginary it's a el'funt," Chris explained.
"It would take some imagination," was Darn's only comment on that.
"What's wrong with it?" asked Danny. "I bet you couldn't do any better."
"What's wrong with it!" exclaimed Darn. "Ask me what's right with it. Everything's wrong with it."
"It looks like the picture of the el'funt—almost," defended Jerry.
"It looks as much like that as I do like a giraffe."
Danny turned his back on Darn and the latter exclaimed:
"What's that blue pants leg for, hangin' down from your coat tail?"
"Why—why—that's the el'funt's tail," Danny replied reluctantly.
"My gorry!" cried Darn, giving way to shrieks of laughter so that he had to sit down on the ground and double up with the paroxysms of mirth. "An el'funt's tail!Oh, my gorry!" and again he rocked back and forth, holding his sides. Then he was attacked bya fit of coughing and finally, when he got his breath, he said:
"Don't you kids know nothing of national history? Hain't you ever seen a picture of an el'funt? Its tail is nothing like that a-tall."
"How's it different?" Danny asked in a very meek voice.
"It's small and round, like a rope," Jerry interposed quickly.
"Of course it is," was Darn's comment.
"I told him so!" exclaimed Jerry.
"But how'd I know that you knew," asked Danny, aggrieved, "when you didn't know how you knew?"
"I don't know," was all the explanation that Jerry could give.
"All I can say is, you'd better study national history, Danny, and learn how the four-footed friends of man are made," remarked Darn.
"How doyouknow el'funts' tails are small and round?" asked Chris.
"Because I'm no dumb-head and learn things."
"I ain't no dumb-head," protested Chris and at the same time Danny asserted:
"Chris ain't no dumb-head."
Jerry saw the green elephant's front feet double up and he jumped down from the barrel, a little bit scared.
"He is, too," said Darn, "and so are you. Jerry Elbow there's got more sense than both of you put together, even if he ain't got no father and mother."
"I haven't either," said Jerry. "I jest somehow knew one thing Danny didn't about el'funts' tails. Danny knows lots more'n I do."
"I guess you'd better take that back about Chris bein' a dumb-head," threatened Danny, scowling from under the elephant's trunk.
"An' you'd better take it back about Danny's bein' one," remarked Chris.
"I won't any such thing," retorted Darn.
"We'll make you," challenged Danny, all his Irish fighting blood up.
"I'd like to see the kid could make me do anything I didn't want to," and Darn doubled up his fists and flung them out in the air at an imaginary adversary.
"I'll show you," Danny boasted and quickly divested himself of the elephant's skin.
"Take a board," cautioned Chris, "an' then you can keep him from runnin' in on you." Chris followed his own advice and Darn, seeing himself attacked from two sides, one of his foes armed, decided he would live to fight another day and scrambled over the fence.
"Yah!" he cried in derision from the alley. "Dumb-heads! Dumb-heads! Oh, Chris, you blue-eyed beauty, turn around and do your duty! Blue-eyed beauty!"
He dodged just in time to avoid the board which Chris, incensed at that most horrible of epithets—for his eyes were blue—had hurled at him with all his might.
"Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty!" chanted Darn, thrusting his face between two palings of the fence and sticking out his tongue.
Then Danny picked up a board and, flanked by Chris, advanced to the fence, whereat Darn took to his heels, shouting, "Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head!" as loud as he could.
At the end of the alley he turned and shouted,
"A pants' leg for an el'funt's tail! Oh, my gorry!"
When he disappeared from sight, the three boys surveyed the elephant's skin lying on the ground.
"Let's not play any more," said Danny.
"I'm tired of the ole circus, anyway," replied Chris.
They went into the house, Jerry slowly following them. Even he could not 'maginary the old green wrapper and the stuffed brown coat sleeve and blue trouser leg into an elephant any more.