Jerry was so surprised that he almost forgot that he had been cheated out of his ticket to the circus, and he stopped crying except for a long shuddering sob every now and then, though the tears stood on his cheeks.
The clown looked at him long and steadily; finally he made a little squeaky noise with his mouth, and then opened his lips as though laughing, but did not utter a sound. His mouth seemed to keep broadening in a hearty laugh until Jerry thought it would really touch his ears. It was such a good-natured grin and his eyes twinkled so that Jerry smiled ever so little.
At that little smile the clown's silent laugh suddenly disappeared and with that funny little squeak in his mouth, which Jerry knew meant joy in spite of its being nothing but a squeak, he jumped suddenly to his feet andturned a series of handsprings around in a circle, kicking his heels in the air and ending up just where he started, directly in front of Jerry, squatting down on the ground, with elbow on knee, chin in hand, looking intently into Jerry's eyes.
The clown's lips were very sober in spite of the general laughableness of his face, but as he kept looking at Jerry a smile started right at the corners of his mouth and then disappeared. That smile seemed to be waiting for encouragement, for after a time it started up again and followed the clown's lips almost to the center of his mouth. It didn't get quite that far, however, but raced quickly back to the corners of his mouth, as though in disappointment, and disappeared.
Then a remarkable change came over the clown's face. The corners of his mouth began to droop and his eyes to close. Jerry thought he was going to cry. His shoulders hunched forward until the clown was the most forlorn looking object Jerry had almost ever seen. The corners of his mouth kept going down and down until they nearly touched his chin.
Jerry kept fascinated eyes on that chalkywhite face with the very, very red lips. It was the drollest expression of grief he had ever seen, and a smile began to play about his own lips.
That tentative smile on Jerry's part brought another sudden and remarkable change over the clown's countenance. He began that silent laugh again and it grew and it grew until the face was all a huge grin. Jerry found himself grinning out of pure, contagious sympathy.
Then the clown laughed harder than ever, still without making a sound, and held his sides as though he had laughed so hard that they ached. He emitted one short, little staccato laugh and stopped suddenly, as if he were waiting to see if Jerry liked the sound before continuing with it.
Jerry did like it and laughed out loud himself.
The clown's face was all changed at that laugh of Jerry's and became so comically still and sorrowful that Jerry laughed harder. Then the clown started laughing out loud, holding his sides until it became a laughing duet between them.
Jerry was happy again. He had forgottenall about Danny's perfidy and the tears of Celia Jane and the stolen "ticket to paradise."
The clown's features suddenly fell calm and he jumped to his feet and pirouetted on his heels with little graceful leaps in the air, as though he were light as a feather and going to take flight. Jerry was sure that that was the clown's way of rejoicing at having made him laugh.
Then the clown was suddenly sitting in front of Jerry again. "So you've found the secret," he remarked in a very human and pleasant voice.
"What secret?" asked Jerry.
The clown whispered in his ear, "The secret of laughter."
"The secret of laughter?" repeated Jerry wonderingly.
"Shush!" warned Whiteface, looking cautiously about. "Don't let anybody know you've found it till it's had time to get used to you. It might like somebody else better and leave you for that somebody else, though I don't see how the secret of laughter could like anybody better than you. You're such a brave little boy."
"What will the secret of laughter do?" Jerry asked in a low tone.
"It will make you happy," replied Whiteface. "Nothing is as bad as you think it is if only you can keep the secret of laughter at your side. It will make you forget your sorrow and laugh and laugh till the sorrow slinks away."
"Never to come back?" asked Jerry.
The clown's mouth drooped again and his shoulders sunk forward.
"That's the tragedy of it," he said. "Sorrow takes such a firm hold on us sometimes, especially when one is grown up, that it comes back even after the secret of laughter has driven it away. But it is different with children; with them the secret of laughter almost always drives sorrow away for good and all and leaves them happy."
"How can it make them happy?" asked Jerry.
"By making them forget."
"Forget what?" pursued Jerry, puzzled.
"What made them cry," responded the clown, "as you have."
Then his face clouded and his white, chalky brows frowned.
"You have forgotten, haven't you?" he asked eagerly.
"Y-y-yes," replied Jerry, "almost."
"Almost!" exclaimed Whiteface, very much disappointed. "Then it has come back if you haven't forgotten it altogether. I wonder what it can be if the secret of laughter can't drive it away?"
He looked up so questioningly that Jerry responded at once. "It's Celia Jane."
It was the clown's turn to be surprised.
"Celia Jane!" he exclaimed. "Cupid starts in so young nowadays!"
"It was not Cupid," said Jerry, who had no more idea than the man in the moon who or what Cupid might be.
"No?" said the clown. "That's good! What did Celia Jane do?"
"She cried."
"Was that what you were crying for—because Celia Jane cried?"
"No," Jerry answered. "I gave her my ticket to the circus which I got for carryin' water for the el'funts."
"Ah!" said the clown. "She cried to get your ticket so she could see the circus herself. I see."
"No! She gave my ticket to Danny," pursued Jerry, and his grief was coming back so rapidly that he felt his lips begin twisting again.
"And Danny went to the circus in your place?" questioned the clown. "And the crocodile tears of Celia Jane made you shed so many real ones!"
"Celia Jane always does what Danny wants her to," continued Jerry.
"It was very naughty of her!" said the clown. "And Danny should be spoken to."
"Will you speak to him?" asked Jerry. "Then mebbe he'll give me my ticket back."
"I don't know Danny," replied the clown, "but I'll probably think up a way to get you into the circus even if you don't have a ticket."
"Oh, can you?" cried Jerry excitedly. He got to his feet and in his eagerness put an arm over Whiteface's shoulder.
"I'm sure I can if I think very hard," returned the clown.
"You will thinkveryhard, won't you? Please."
"Oh, awfully hard," replied Whiteface. "But don't you worry. The secret of laughter made your grief slink away for good. But I must know your name. It will help me to think."
"Jerry Elbow," replied Jerry promptly.
"Well, Jerry Elbow," said the clown, "now I'll think. You may watch me think, but don't say anything, as I might get to thinking your thoughts, and if our thoughts get crossed there's no telling what would happen."
"I won't," Jerry promised.
The clown put his chin in his hand, palm out so that his thumb and forefinger half encircled his face, and began slowly rolling his head from side to side. Then with the forefinger of his other hand he tapped the top of his head slowly several times.
"Think!" he commanded his own head. "Here's a very small boy that you can make very happy. Think of a way to do it. Think!"
Jerry sat down again and watched him eagerly, holding on to himself to keep from speaking and getting their thoughts mixed up.
Every emotion pictured on the clown's mobile face was reflected on Jerry's. When the clown brightened as though he felt the thought coming that would provide a means for getting Jerry into the circus, Jerry's face likewise brightened. But when Whiteface slumped down into the most discouraged attitude in the world, Jerry knew that that idea wouldn't do and the corners of his own mouth drooped and, unconsciously, he rested his chin in the palm of his hand just as the clown did and despair made him huddle down in a heap.
All of a sudden the clown made a clicking noise with his tongue and his figure began to straighten up and his face to lighten until it was all smiles. Jerry bounded to his feet. He forgot all about Whiteface's caution not to speak and cried:
"Have you got it? Did the thought come?"
"Yes!" cried the clown. "I'll buy you a ticket!"
"Will you?" exclaimed Jerry. "Willyou?"
"Yes, here's the money," and Whitefacereached for his pocket. His hand kept sliding down his loose, blue-spotted, white costume, but did not enter into any pocket.
"Can't you find your pocket?" asked Jerry fearfully.
"I had one this morning," replied the clown solemnly, "and there was money in it—enough to buy you a ticket to the circus and more, but now I don't seem to be able to find it. You don't see a pocket on me, do you, Jerry Elbow?"
Jerry went close and walked all about the clown. There was not a sign of a pocket and he began to feel dreadfully disappointed.
"There ain't no pocket," he said sorrowfully.
"Then there must be some pocket. If there ain't no pocket, there must be a pocket somewhere. If you had said there is no pocket it would be so. Look again."
Jerry looked carefully, more and more sorrowfully.
"Thereisno pocket," he said at last in a voice that was trembly, all ready to cry.
"That's funny," said the clown. "I know there was one this morning because I usedsome of the money that was in it." He sank into thought for a moment and then looked suddenly at Jerry.
"I know why we can't find a pocket!" cried he. "While I was thinking very hard of a way to get you into the circus and almost had the thought, you said, 'Have you got it? Did the thought come?' Now, didn't you?"
The appalling truth burst upon Jerry. He had spoiled Whiteface's thought by interrupting and their thoughts had got mixed.
"I didn't know I was going to," he said. "I tried so hard not to."
"And didn't you think that it would take only fifty cents to buy a ticket?" asked the clown.
"Yes," Jerry miserably admitted.
"That's it!" exclaimed the clown. "That's what mixed my thoughts all up with yours. I was trying to think of a way to get you in without any money. Then, when our thoughts got mixed, I began thinking of the ordinary way of getting into a circus by buying a ticket."
"Can't you think again?" Jerry pleadedin a very contrite voice. "I will keep still this time. Iwill!"
Just as he spoke a band inside the tent started playing. It was so near him that he was startled, and jumped.
"The circus is about to begin," said the clown. "The band is playing for the parade. I must think quickly so you won't miss any of it."
There was no need of warning Jerry not to say anything this time. He would have said nothing if he had seen the clown turn into an elephant. It was an awful hard thought to think, for the clown stretched out on the ground right close to the tent and looked under the canvas. Then he rolled over, sat up and wagged his head solemnly at Jerry.
"I've got it!" he cried and bounded to his feet and jumped clear over Jerry's head.
"I didn't say nothing this time!" boasted Jerry. "I didn't say nothing this time!"
"No," said the clown, "you didn't and our thoughts didn't all get mixed up."
"Will I get in before it starts?" asked Jerry.
"Yes, or my name's not Jack Robinson," said the clown.
"Is that your name?" asked Jerry.
"Only to-day," replied the clown. "To-morrow it may be Tom, Dick or Harry."
"Robinson?" questioned Jerry.
"Or Smith or Kettlewell," replied the clown, smiling. "Now you must do just what I tell you to and do it quickly."
"I will," promised Jerry.
"Shut your eyes. Are they shut?"
"Yes," said Jerry, closing them so tight that he saw funny little green and red and purple streaks of light.
"Keep them shut. Don't open them once till I tap you on the back twice. Then you count to twenty, and if I don't tap you on the back again, open your eyes and you will be in the circus. Then you walk right ahead till you come to the first row of seats where there will be a lot of children and you just pick out any empty seat you see and sit there. Do you understand?"
"Yes," replied Jerry.
"Eyes shut," commanded the clown. "Come with me."
He led Jerry quite a distance away from the tent, Jerry thought, and then had him sit down on the ground so that the clown was directly behind him.
"Now," said Whiteface, "you are going to be carried into the circus, but don't open your eyes till I tap twice on your back and you have counted to twenty."
"I won't," promised Jerry.
"If you see me in the circus," said the clown, "you can speak to me if you want to. No, don't open your eyes."
For Jerry, in his eagerness to assure Whiteface that he would speak to him if he saw him in the circus, was about to look up at him. For fear that he yet might do so, he shut his eyes tighter, till they hurt, and covered them with both hands.
"Lean over," whispered the clown, "close to the ground."
As he did so, Jerry felt his forehead brush something that felt exactly like the canvas of a tent.
"Now," said the clown, "good-by till you speak to me in the circus."
"Good-by," whispered Jerry in a daze of delight and mystery.
He heard a swishing sound and then felt the clown push him along on the ground. A moment later he felt two thumps on his back and he started in to count. He reached twenty without feeling another thump and opened his eyes.
He was in the circus tent!
Jerry knew that he was in the circus tent although he had not expected it to be anything like that. A band was playing and hundreds and hundreds of persons, mostly children, were sitting on boards, each one raised a little higher than the others, and whistling and clapping their hands. And clear around the tent were other sections of seats, all filled with men and women and children. Eyes wide open with wonder at the smell and the bigness of the tent and the paraphernalia used by the performers, Jerry rose to his feet. He looked back of him, but only the canvas side of the tent met his gaze. Whiteface, the clown, had entirely disappeared!
The lively air the band was playing seemed to get right inside of Jerry, for his heart began to pound fast and his eyes were dancing.
He was going to see the circus! The clown had got him in without a ticket! He sawmany boys and girls and older persons, too, hurrying to find places on the board seats and he joined the throng. He remembered that Whiteface had told him to take any seat there he could find and he sat down in one in the second row between a boy a good deal older than himself and a man with a black mustache.
He had hardly got seated when, from the farther side of the tent, there entered a gorgeous carriage drawn by a pair of milk-white horses. When the carriage got around in front of him, Jerry saw that it contained Mr. Burrows, the man who had let him carry water for the elephants even if he was too young, but he didn't pay much attention to him, for there was such a variety of different things to absorb his attention,—beautiful women in richly colored garments on horses and on sober, humpbacked camels, and even in little houses on the elephants, just as he had seen them in the street parade.
There was the sword-swallower and the fat lady, the giant and the dwarf, and so many other things that Jerry couldn't remember them all. When the last of them had passedout at the other side of the tent, he became aware of a smell that was most enticing, quite different from the smell of the circus,—the sawdust and the animals and the crowd. He had just identified it as the smell of freshly roasted peanuts when a boy in a white coat in the aisle asked if anybody there wanted freshly roasted peanuts for five cents, only a half a dime.
Jerry did, and after watching other small boys buying bags of the delicacy, he fished out the dime from his blouse pocket and gave it to the boy, who handed him back a bag of peanuts and a nickel.
Jerry had just cracked his first peanut shell and was munching the two nuts in it when he suddenly became aware that the circus was going on. In fact, there was so much going on that he could not see it all. He watched the trapeze performers for a minute, swinging and turning somersaults and throwing each other about in the air, and then his eyes wandered to the acrobats going through the most surprising contortions on a platform. He hadn't seen half enough of that when his attention was captured bythe form of a woman sliding down a wire that went clear to the top of the tent and she was not holding on to the wire at all! She was hanging from it by her teeth! He expected to see her dash into the crowd of people when she reached the end of the wire, but two men stopped her.
Fast and furiously the circus stunts were performed. Men in shaggy trousers on horses threw ropes about each other and picked up handkerchiefs from the ground while their horses were running lickety-split. They just leaned over in the saddle until Jerry thought they were falling off, and picked up the handkerchiefs.
And there was a tight-rope walker. It was a woman with no skirts on at all, and the rope was way up much higher than a man's head and she didn't touch the ground with her balancing pole at all. Nora could never walk the rope like that. And the dancing ponies and the trained seals and the dog that wound in and out among the spokes of a buggy wheel and all the other acts thrilled Jerry and made him almost dizzy, they came so fast; but best of all he liked the clowns withtheir funny faces and droll antics. He did not pick out Whiteface the first time the clowns came out, there were so many of them and they looked so much alike with their white faces and red mouths.
But just after the dancing horses had left the tent and the clowns swarmed in again, Jerry saw one of them stop and look up at the boys above him. He had a bulldog under his arm.
Jerry, unmindful of those about him, stood up and shouted:
"Whiteface! Here I am!"
The clown turned to him, made that funny clicking noise in his mouth and bowed.
"Jerry Elbow," said the clown and clapped his hands.
"It's Jerry!" exclaimed Danny's startled voice somewhere among the hundreds of boys and grown-ups back of Jerry. Then Danny added in an awed voice, "The clown spoke to him!"
Jerry suddenly sat down, for all eyes were directed towards him. He didn't look around for Danny and Chris, for he was too confused to face all those pairs of eyes.
Four or five of the other clowns gathered about Whiteface, looked up at Jerry and clapped their hands, too. Jerry shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them Whiteface and the other clowns were all doing something there right in front of him.
Whiteface was placing his bulldog down on the ground and Jerry kept fascinated eyes on him. He never could tell afterwards what the other clowns did then except that as they left to go to another part of the circus, one of them, who wore the biggest and longest and flattest shoes Jerry had ever seen, stepped on his own foot and couldn't get off! Another clown had to help him off his own foot!
But everything that Whiteface did Jerry saw and remembered, for he knew that Whiteface was playing just for him alone. The bulldog stood perfectly still until Whiteface held out a stick; then the clown jerked upon the strap which he held in his right hand, one end of which was fastened to the dog's collar, and the dog jumped right over the stick!
Next time Whiteface raised the stick much higher, but when he signaled to the dog byjerking on his collar that it was time for him to jump, the dog jumped over the stick again.
Jerry heard the crowd laughing and applauding. He thought no one could help laughing at the ludicrous expression on the clown's face as he looked up at the spectators every time the dog jumped the stick. Jerry did not awake to the fact that the bulldog was a stuffed toy one, and not a real dog, until the clown took it by the tail and struck another clown on the back with it.
The gasp of astonishment that came from many small throats told Jerry that others had thought it a real dog, too. He joined in the laughter at the easy manner in which the clown had fooled them. The look that Whiteface turned on Jerry sent a warm glow surging over his body. He liked Whiteface and was happy in the knowledge that Whiteface liked him.
He watched the clown fasten the life-size toy bulldog to the back of his costume. How he did it, Jerry could not tell, but the mock terror depicted on Whiteface's features when he found the bulldog with what seemed to be a death-grip on the seat of his clothes causedJerry and the rest of the children to shriek with laughter. With that look of mock terror on his face, the clown started to run to get away from the dog, and he ran and cavorted and leaped so ludicrously that many eyes besides Jerry's followed him all the way around the arena until he disappeared through the entrance.
Then Jerry found that there were several acts going on, of which he had missed much. When they had finished, another clown came along with a big head that looked like some kind of a bird's head. It was way up in the air on a long neck with a wide yellow bill that every now and then opened and showed a red tongue.
Almost in front of Jerry, the clown stopped, bent down his bird-head sidewise and suddenly gave a loud kiss to a little girl sitting on the end of the first row.
The little girl gave a shriek of surprise and terror and jumped from the seat and ran up the aisle back of Jerry, amid a roar of delight from the crowd. The girl hid her face and refused to go back to the front row, despite the coaxing of her mother.
Jerry offered to let her have his seat. He wasn't afraid of the clowns. Then the boy next to him got up and the woman and the girl took their seats while Jerry and the boy sat down in the front row, Jerry at the very end. He would be close enough to touch Whiteface the next time he came around.
He had forgotten all about Danny and Chris and the trick Celia Jane had played on him. He was so happy that he would willingly have shared with them the pleasure of seeing the circus and getting acquainted with Whiteface, if that had been possible. He wished Kathleen and Nora and Mother 'Larkey could see it. Never in all his life had he been so excited and so happy. He wanted more and more. If only the circus would never end!—Anyway, not until he was too tired to stay awake one second longer.
Suddenly the band struck into a different air,—one that set Jerry's pulse to beating even faster. It was like an echo from the past; he had heard it before. It was the music he had thought he heard when he stood before the circus poster of the elephant jumping the fence! Unconsciously Jerry began saying something softly under his breath.
And the elephants were coming! Several clowns were running ahead. Among them Jerry espied Whiteface, and in his excitement rose to his feet, as they came closer and closer.
As the band played on, words seemed to be coming of themselves to Jerry's tongue, and in a sort of rhythmical chant he was repeating in time to the music as the elephants got directly in front of him:
"Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle, Carryin' water for the ellifants, Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle Carryin' water for the ellifants."
Jerry was aware that he was crooning, but did not know that he had risen to his feet and was repeating those two lines of verse out loud.
The band suddenly stopped playing, and in the ensuing silence the childish treble of Jerry's voice was heard by every one in that section of seats saying:
"Great Sult Anna O'Queen, in the jungle,Carryin' water for the ellifants."
He had hardly finished the words when the leader in the line of elephants turned small, beady eyes towards Jerry, lifted up its trunk and trumpeted aloud. Jerry was not frightened at all by that cry, but held out his arms toward the elephant, crying, "Up! Up! Sult Anna!" as though that were the most natural thing in the world to do and he had been doing it all his life.
The elephant trumpeted again and lumbered heavily towards the tier of seats where Jerry stood, lowered its trunk and curled it about Jerry's body.
A great gasp went up from the people about Jerry and then some women and men cried out and a girl screamed.
"It's mad! It's run amuck!" some one cried, and in an instant there was an uproar of terror as the people left their seats and surged back to higher tiers where they hoped the elephant could not reach them.
"It's Jerry! It's Jerry!" came an agonized scream which Jerry, from his seat high in the air on the elephant's trunk, recognized as the voice of Chris.
"He'll be killed!" cried Danny's remorseful voice, high and shrill above the uproar. "And it's all my fault!"
"Up! Up! Sult Anna!" commanded Jerry, and laughed aloud and waved his arms. Why were all those people afraid? Sult Anna wasn't going to hurt him!
All the clowns had come running about the elephant.
"It's Jerry Elbow!" exclaimed Whiteface.
"It's Gary!" cried a woman's voice from the palanquin on the elephant's back. Jerry looked at her. She was a very pretty woman in a most wonderful sparkling dress, and she leaned forward, extending her arms towards him.
Jerry heard the strident voice of the elephant-tender commanding Sult Anna to lower him and the man started to jab the elephant in the trunk, but Whiteface shouted:
"Don't touch the elephant! She knows the boy!"
"He's not hurt at all!" cried an amazed voice in the crowd.
"Take your seats! There is no danger!" Whiteface called to the frightened and huddled mass at the top tiers of seats.
Then the band struck into a lively air and circus attendants and spectators ran up to the elephants. Among those who arrived early were Danny and Chris, frightened but curious, and Mr. Burrows. The performance was going on in other parts of the big tent and the spectators there seemed already to have forgotten the incident, but the unreserved seat section still seethed with interest, apprehension and curiosity.
"What's all this fuss?" asked Mr. Burrows, puffing from the speed with which he had hurried to the scene. "We can't have the performance held up this way and the people frightened."
"As the elephants came along," explained Whiteface, "a boy was singing some of the words of my elephant song, and Sultana, I believe, recognized him. She trumpeted twice, reached out her trunk and carried him high into the air. He kept crying, 'Up! Up! Sultana!' She has not hurt him at all."
Mr. Burrows looked up at Jerry, still sitting on the elephant's trunk.
"Why, bless my soul!" he exclaimed."It's the orphan boy who helped carry water for the elephants this morning!"
"Robert, it's Gary!" again cried the beautiful lady in the palanquin on the elephant's back.
Jerry looked up at her and found her weeping. He wondered why she was crying and who Gary might be.
"The other elephants are getting restless," said Mr. Burrows. "Get the boy down, Bowe, and take him with you to the dressing rooms. The act must go on."
Whiteface went up to the elephant and began talking to her gently, patting her shoulder. Her keeper approached and ordered her to put Jerry down.
"Down, Sult Anna, down!" cried Jerry.
Hardly were the words out of his mouth when Jerry was literally placed by the elephant in the arms of Whiteface.
"Who are you?" asked the clown of Jerry, looking long into his eyes.
"He's Jerry Elbow," said Danny who, with Chris, had edged in close to the little crowd surrounding the elephant. "He's a orfum and lives with us."
"When did his parents die?"
"He ain't got no parents," replied Danny. "Have you, Jerry?"
"No," said Jerry.
"Robert, help me down!" called the beautiful lady on the elephant.
Whiteface set Jerry down and with two of the elephant keepers went to Sultana's side and caught the woman as she half slid, half jumped from her high seat.
As soon as she touched the ground, the lady ran to Jerry and he found himself gathered convulsively in her arms.
"Oh, Gary, my son! Don't you know me? I am your mother!"
Jerry looked long into the face of the lady. It was all pink and white and her lips were very red. Her hair was a golden brown and it was long and thick and hung down her back.
"Are you my mother?" asked Jerry wistfully. He would like very much to have a mother as beautiful as this.
"Oh, yes, I am! I am!" cried the lady and clasped Jerry close to her breast.
"Helen," said Whiteface, "you mustn't let your hopes get too high."
"He is an orphan," observed Mr. Burrows, "his brother here said so," and he pointed at Chris.
"He's not my brother," interposed Chris quickly. "Father found him before he died and brought him home."
"Then it is Gary! It is!" exclaimed thebeautiful lady. "As if I wouldn't know him—his eyes, his hair and his lips! Or as if Sultana could be mistaken. What is your name, dear; do you remember that?"
"Jerry Elbow," replied Jerry.
"What is yours?" Whiteface asked Chris.
"Chris Mullarkey," he replied.
"How long has Jerry been with you?"
"Three years," put in Danny.
"He was only three and a half then," said the woman, "and probably couldn't say his name very plainly. He couldn't at the time he was stolen. Gary L. Bowe would sound very much like Jerry Elbow to any one who didn't know."
"You're right," said Whiteface. "I believe he is our boy."
Jerry looked up at the clown and such an expression of delight came over his face at the idea of the clown being his father that Whiteface's voice went all husky and he took Jerry in his arms.
"Do you remember anything about your parents?" he asked.
"Seems as though there was a man with a white face," replied Jerry.
"That would be you, Robert," said the woman named Helen.
"Are you my father?" Jerry asked, putting an arm timidly about the clown's shoulder.
"Of course he is!" cried Mr. Burrows, blowing his nose until it made a formidable sound. "Bowe, you take your wife and child into the dressing tent, so the circus can go on. Sultana is getting restless."
Whiteface took Jerry up in his arms and his new-found mother clung to his hand as they started to leave the arena, tears still in her eyes. She stopped to call to Danny and Chris to follow them. Sultana lifted up her trunk and trumpeted. As they tramped along, the spectators craning their necks to get a better view, Jerry heard Mr. Burrows saying in a loud voice to the audience in the section where he had sat:
"Ladies and gentlemen, there is no occasion for alarm. The elephant, Sultana, recognized in the boy, Jerry Elbow, the son of our famous clown, Robert Ellison Bowe, who was stolen from the circus in a neighboring State three years ago by a disgruntled employee. The police of the country hadbeen searching for him and Mr. Bowe had spent thousands of dollars in the effort to find him. What money and mind and trained detective intelligence failed to do, the retentive memory of the elephant, Sultana, has accomplished and, thanks to her, a grieving father and mother are reunited with their long-lost son. The performance will now continue and you will see what a great degree of intelligence is possessed by these pachyderms in the tricks which they will now perform for your gratification."
And how the people shouted and applauded at that!
"Bow to them. They are cheering for you," said Whiteface to Jerry. "They are glad you have been found."
Jerry waved his hands to them and bowed and a patter of hand-clapping ran along the audience as they passed until they reached the entrance.
Chris suddenly cried, "Danny! Look at them el'funts! They're standin' on their heads! Lookee!"
Jerry just had to see that and he squirmed around in Whiteface's arms.
"They're funny!" he laughed. "Which one is Sult Anna?"
"She's the one at the table," replied his mother, "ringing the bell for a waiter to bring her something to eat."
"Can el'funts do that?" Jerry asked amazed.
"Much more than that, Gary," she responded.
"I guess el'funts know more'n some people," Danny remarked.
Jerry craned his neck to see the elephants.
"Are they going to jump the fence now?" he asked.
Whiteface burst into a joyous laugh.
"Helen, I told you my idea for a circus poster would fetch the children!" he said. "They don't jump a fence," he explained to Jerry.
"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Jerry. "The picture shows them doing it!"
"They don't really, Gary," said his mother. "The picture was just drawn that way to fit the old nursery rhyme about the elephant's jumping up to the sky."
"Then it ain't so?" Jerry asked, terribly disappointed.
"No," replied Whiteface, "but they do other things more remarkable than that."
"What?" asked Jerry. "I want to see them."
"Of course you do," said his father. "You want to see all the circus and you shall to-night, and Mrs. Mullarkey and Celia Jane, too."
"All of it?" questioned Jerry. "The little man no bigger than a two-year-old baby and the sword-swallower and all?"
"And all," replied Whiteface. "The menagerie and the side show and the main performance."
"Will Nora and Kathleen see it all, too?"
"Who are Nora and Kathleen?" his mother asked.
"Why, they're Danny's sisters!" he replied. "Didn't you know that?"
"You hadn't mentioned them before," said Whiteface, "but they'll see it, too. Are there any more in the Mullarkey family?"
"No," answered Jerry, "just Danny and Chris and Nora and Celia Jane and Kathleen and Mother 'Larkey."
By that time they had reached a part ofanother tent which was all screened off into small rooms, into one of which Whiteface and the lady carried Jerry, followed by Danny and Chris, who, torn between their desire to see the elephants perform and their curiosity about Jerry's new-found father and mother and their desire to obey the beautiful lady, had kept close at their heels.
"Now," said Mrs. Bowe, seating herself on a bench and taking Jerry on her lap, addressing Danny as the oldest, "tell me all you can about Gary."
"Father found him one night along a country road, cryin' in a fence corner, and brought him home," said Danny, "an' he's lived with us ever since. That's all."
"How long ago was that?" she questioned.
"It was when I was five an' a half," replied Danny.
"How old are you now?" Whiteface asked.
"Eight and more'n a half."
"Three years ago," said Mrs. Bowe. "That was only a few months after he was stolen. How did he happen to be alone in a country road?"
"I don't know," replied Danny.
"Perhaps your mother knows," suggested Whiteface.
"I don't think so," Danny replied. "Father always said it was a mystery. It was very late at night—almost midnight, I guess."
"We must see her, Robert, and thank her for taking care of Gary."
"Yes," said Whiteface, "she kept him after her husband's death—with five children of her own. She must have liked him very—"
"She does," Chris interrupted eagerly.
"We all do," Danny stated.
"How could you help it?" asked Mrs. Bowe. "Now, Gary, can you tell me anything about what happened to you? Think hard."
"Yes," said his father. "We left you in the dressing room with one of the girl acrobats while we were on and when we came back you were gone. The girl had been called out for a few minutes and got back just as we did. We hunted all over the circus for you and got the police to help us."
"Do you remember any one taking you away?" asked the beautiful lady who was now his mother.
"No'm," replied Jerry.
"Say, Mother, Gary," pleaded her low, beautiful voice close to his ear.
"No, Mother," Jerry repeated obediently.
"Try to think awfully hard," said Whiteface; "was there a man with a big mark across his forehead—"
"A red mark?" interrupted Jerry eagerly.
"Yes!" cried his mother. "Robert, it was John Rand! I knew it was that low creature."
"I feared it," said the clown.
"What did he do to you, Gary? Was he kind to you?" asked his mother.
Jerry seemed to see in a flash a man with a red mark across his forehead cuffing him over the head and twisting his arm till he cried out from the pain.
"I'll pull your arm right out if you ever tell any one you ain't my brat," a coarse, thick voice seemed to be saying in his ear, "or if you ever let on as how I ever hurt you in anyway at all."
Jerry cowered down in his mother's arms and hid his face against her breast. He did not answer her questions. His heart wasgalloping with fear. The man with the red scar might come back.
"Why don't you answer, Gary?" asked the clown gently. "Don't you remember?"
Jerry felt the lady who was his mother holding him tighter in her arms and then she gave a sudden start. He did not answer. He was afraid to.
"Robert!" she cried. "His heart is beating as though it would burst! The memory of that beast must frighten him terribly."
"He can never hurt you again, Gary," Whiteface assured him. "You will always be with us from now on and we won't let him ever come near you again. Did he ever hurt you?"
Jerry, remembering now vividly what the man had done to him, became more frightened than ever and, instead of answering, began to cry.
"We must not hurry him into confidence," said Whiteface.
"Oh, my boy!" wailed the elephant lady. "How terribly you must have suffered when my heart was aching so to know you were safe and to comfort and love you!"
She kissed him passionately and squeezed him so hard that his breath went entirely out of his body for a moment.
"Has Gary ever told you anything about the man who stole him?" asked Whiteface of Danny.
"No," he replied, "but Jerry ran away from him."
"How do you know that?"
"He said he had when he was going to run away from us."
"Why was he going to run away from you?"
Danny swallowed rapidly but didn't answer.
"Because Danny wouldn't let him be el'funt in our play circus," Chris explained for his brother.
Mr. Bowe took Chris' words up so quickly that Jerry thought his father was angry with Chris.
"Wouldn't let him be the elephant!" he exclaimed. "Why did Gary want especially to be the elephant?"
"I don't know," Chris answered.
"Remember, if you can," urged Whiteface."It will help me to prove to every one that Gary is our boy."
"I guess it was because he knew something about el'funts," Danny ventured. "He knew that el'funts' tails are small and round like a rope, but he didn't know how he knew."
"I see," said the clown. "That is an important fact. I'm glad you told me."
"An' he said 'O Queen' when he saw the picture of the el'funt jumping the fence!" cried Danny excitedly. "Just the same as he did at the circus when the band stopped playin' an' before the el'funt picked him up."
"He didn't know he said it," Chris added, "an' he couldn't tell Danny what he meant by it, could he, Danny?"
"No," Danny replied.
"That clinches it!" exclaimed Whiteface, and took Jerry from his mother's arms. "Don't you cry any more, Gary-boy. Nobody shall hurt you again. O'Queen was what you used to call Sultana, the elephant—'Sult Anna O'Queen,' as though that were her name. It was the way you said a part of one line in my elephant song: 'Great Sultana, Oh, Queen of the jungle!"
"Carryin' water for the ellifants," said Jerry, through his tears.
"Do you remember any of the chorus?"
Jerry thought hard, but finally shook his head. Whiteface then started to repeat the chorus: