The days slipped by and none of the children played circus again. Jerry thought of it often and would have liked to be the elephant just once, but he never said anything. That made him dream all the more about the real circus which was coming and wish that he could see it. He was very careful not to put his longing into words, so he wouldn't remind Mother 'Larkey of the ends that wouldn't meet and make her feel badly. One day she came across the old green wrapper elephant skin in the woodshed.
"Why don't you children play circus any more?" she asked Danny.
"El'funts don't look like that," he asserted, pointing disdainfully at the discarded costume. "Their tails are small like a rope."
"Are they now?" she asked. "And how might you be after knowing that?"
"National history says so," Danny replied in a very decisive tone.
Mrs. Mullarkey gave one of those low, fleeting laughs that always made Jerry feel so good inside and which had become so rare of late. "Yes, I guess national history would be after telling about the elephant's tail as long as it deals with elephants and eagles and donkeys and camels and all."
Jerry felt there must be something funny in what Mother 'Larkey said, because her nose went all crinkly, and he smiled in sympathy anyway, although he didn't understand.
But playing circus no longer appealed to the Mullarkey children. Darn Darner had had a blighting influence on the power of their imaginations, and Danny in the elephant costume would have been to them now only a little boy in an old green wrapper much too large for him, dragging about a stuffed blue trouser leg for a tail,—a very ridiculous spectacle. Jerry realized that there would never be a next time and that he would never play the elephant.
A few days before the circus was to cometo town Jerry and the Mullarkey children were returning from the woods by the creek, where they had gone to see what the prospects were for a good yield of hazel and hickory nuts in the fall, and had just entered the edge of town when they saw Darn Darner approaching. They had not set eyes on him since the day he broke up their circus and they were doubtful as to how he would behave towards them.
"Just pretend as though nothing had never happened," Nora suggested.
"Yes, that's best," Danny agreed. "Let him speak first."
They watched Darn's nearer approach without seeming to do so. They tried to keep talking and laughing so he wouldn't think they were the least little bit afraid of him, but Jerry and Celia Jane first fell silent and then Chris and Nora, and finally Danny, so that when they met Darn they were as quiet and subdued as a funeral party.
"Hello!" said Darn, as they were in the act of passing. "Where you kids been?"
"Hullo, Darn," replied Danny. "We just been out in the woods."
"There's goin' to be lots of hazelnuts in the fall," Nora informed him, in a voice which she tried to make genial.
"And hickory nuts too," added Jerry, feeling that such good news would help keep Darn in his present state of good humor and from thinking about what had happened at their circus.
"That don't interest me much just now," Darn remarked. "I'm goin' to the circus. We're goin' to have reserved seats, a dollar and a half apiece. There ain't no better to be had."
"A dollar an' a half for one seat!" exclaimed Celia Jane. "I thought it cost only fifty cents to see the circus."
"That's just to get in and set on an ole board without any back to it," Darn informed her. "We're goin' to have reserved seats in the boxes, with chairs to sit on."
"A fifty-cent seat would suit me all right," observed Danny.
"An' me, too," echoed Chris and Nora and Celia Jane and Jerry.
"Are you kids goin' to see the circus unload?" asked Darn.
"Will they let you get close enough to see?" questioned Danny in turn.
"Of course. They can't keep you from lookin', I guess."
"No, I guess not." Danny answered his own question as though it had been asked by Chris. "Anybody knows he could look."
"Could you see the el'funt?" Jerry asked timidly.
"You could if you had eyes," replied Darn loftily.
"Where're they goin' to unload?" Danny queried.
"On the sidetrack by Smith's house, just back of the depot, at five o'clock in the morning. I'm goin' to see them unload."
"So'm I!" cried Danny.
"An' me, too!" asserted Chris.
"An' me, too!" Jerry hurried to make that statement so that Danny could not say he couldn't go because he had not chosen to go when there was a chance.
"No, you're not," Darn asserted with a sudden frown.
"I am, too!" cried Jerry. Then after a moment he asked plaintively, "Why ain't I?"
"I guess you ain't got nothin' to say about whether Jerry goes or not," Danny interposed quickly. "He can go if he wants to."
"No, he can't," contradicted Darn.
"Why can't he?" Nora asked.
"They don't let anybody in the poor farm go to the circus," was Darn's unexpected reply.
"That's not got nothin' to do with Jerry!" cried Danny hotly. "I guess he ain't in no poor farm."
"He's goin' to be, though," pursued Darn calmly, in that restrained, superior, informative manner which sometimes can be so maddening.
"I ain't either, am I, Danny?" Jerry appealed dolefully.
"No, you ain't," Danny assured him. "Darn's jest tryin' to make you cry. Don't you let him scare you."
"Jerry Elbow's goin' to the poor farm before the circus gets here," stated Darn.
"I ain't!" cried Jerry in a shaky voice. "I won't go! So there!"
"They'll take you," Darn informed him, "and you won't have anything to say about it."
"Mother 'Larkey won't let them take me, will she, Danny?" asked Jerry in a voice that was becoming shrill and high from fear.
"No, she won't," asserted Danny. "Darn Darner, you jest let Jerry be. You ain't got no right to scare a orfum boy like that."
"We won't let them take you," comforted Celia Jane, suddenly affectionate, and put her arm about Jerry's neck.
Darn stepped directly in front of Jerry and stared coolly down at him until Jerry was so uncomfortable that he couldn't raise his eyes from the ground.
"You're goin' to the poor farm Wednesday morning," he said calmly, "because Mrs. Mullarkey's too poor to keep you any longer. She can't make enough to keep her own kids."
Jerry felt suddenly very little and all alone in a big cold world. Fear had entered his heart. He felt that Mrs. Mullarkey not only hadn't been able to make both ends meet but that she was never going to be able to do it. He some way knew that Darn Darner was telling the truth and that soon he would be torn away from the only home he could remember. His lips twisted and he felt thehot tears filling his eyes. Yet he denied Darn's statement with all his soul.
"They won't! They shan't take me! I'll run away first!"
"Much good that would do you," commented Darn unsympathetically. "It'd be easy enough to find you."
"How do you know they're goin' to take Jerry away?" asked Chris.
"He don't know it!" cried Nora. "He's jest tryin' to scare us."
"No, I ain't," denied Darn. "My father's overseer of the poor in this county and I guess I heard him tell mamma last night that he was goin' to take Jerry to the poor farm Wednesday morning. He said Mrs. Mullarkey had agreed as to how she'd hafta let him take Jerry because her insurance money from Mr. Mullarkey was all gone and she couldn't make enough to support her own kids."
"It ain't so!" blustered Jerry, but all the time terribly frightened. He tried to think of something to say that would show he was not afraid of Darn Darner, who was always picking on little boys.
"You shan't go!" Celia Jane cried, tears running down her cheeks. She flung both arms around Jerry's neck and squeezed him passionately.
"What will Kathleen do without Jerry?" asked Nora in a choked voice.
Jerry looked up and saw that she was quietly weeping, too. They believed it! Believed that Mother 'Larkey would let them take him away! He had been somewhat comforted by their stout assertions that Darn's words were false, but now—!
He was stunned. Then his lips twisted and twitched and the tears that had been forming in his eyes spilled silently over.
"Don't get scared, Jerry," Danny tried to comfort him. Then he turned to the tormentor. "Darnyou, Darn, why can't you let him be!"
There it was! Just what Jerry wanted to show Darn he couldn't scare him. His oozing courage flamed up in a final flare of desperation. Through his tears and the choke in his throat he cried:
"DarnDarn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn!DarnDarn Darner!"
"That's about enough from you, Jerry Elbow!" shouted Darn. He gave Jerry a resounding slap in the face. "No kid like you can call me that without takin' the biggest lickin' he ever got."
"No, you don't!" cried Danny and quick as a flash he rushed at Darn and began pounding him over the head and shoulders with his fists. Chris and Nora went to Danny's aid and the three pairs of fists caused Darn to duck and run a short distance.
Jerry slumped down into the dust of the road, weeping bitterly, and Celia Jane flopped down by him, hugging him tight and mingling her tears with his.
Danny and Chris and even the usually gentle Nora, but for once with all her gentleness vanished, gave vent to their feelings against Darn by making a chant out of his name.
"DarnDarn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn!DarnDarn Darner! Darn! Darn! Darn!"
Into that chant boiled over all their pent-up dislike for him which had been simmering under cover for so long. Darn started backtowards them, angry through and through, but stopped as they rushed to meet him, fists doubled up ready for battle. He had fought many boys bigger than himself, but he fled before the numerical strength of the present enemy, flinging back over his shoulder from a safe distance, "Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Yah! You'llhaftago to the poor farm if you want to see Jerry Elbow after Wednesday."
Upon hearing Darn's words Jerry stretched out at full length in the road and his voice rose in a quavering wail of anguish. Celia Jane emitted a thinner, shriller wail. Nora came back to comfort them and was caught by the contagion so that she too plumped down in the road and wept.
Danny and Chris, being boys, were ashamed to give vent to their emotions in a similar way and stood looking down at the huddled forms in the road. Chris, after a time, found himself weeping in sympathy and openly rubbed away the tears with his shirt sleeve. Even Danny swallowed hard and dabbed at his eyes.
"Well, I'll be horn-swoggled!" exclaimed a startled, mystified voice back of the children.
Jerry opened his eyes on a blurred picture of Danny and Chris turning suddenly about and of Nora springing to her feet. A man was just getting out of a two-seated buggy. All sound of his approach had been drowned out by the vociferous lamentations of Jerry and Celia Jane, which still continued.
"What's the trouble here?" asked the man in a deep, pleasant voice that carried even through the clamor into Jerry's consciousness. He raised his head and looked up through swollen and tear-drenched eyes at the man.
"They're g-goin' to take Jerry Elbow to the p-p-poor farm Wednesday morning," Danny stutteringly explained.
"Then you must be the Mullarkey children," observed the man, speaking to the group.
"I'm Danny," said Danny, and Chris identified himself.
"Then this must be Jerry Elbow," the man remarked, stooping to pick Jerry up.
Jerry flung his arms about the man's neck and clung there desperately.
"Yes, sir, he's Jerry," Nora explained, as Celia Jane got up out of the road and brushed the dust from her dress.
"My name's Tom Phillips," said their new friend. "I knew your father, Dan Mullarkey, very well. He told me once how he found you by the roadside one stormy night far from any house, Jerry Elbow."
Jerry felt comforted in the strong arms of Mr. Phillips and at the pleasant, deep quality of his voice. He stopped crying except for the long, shuddering sobs that always came at intervals after he had cried so hard.
"Who said anything about taking you to the poor farm?" he asked Jerry.
"D-D-Darn," Jerry sobbed out.
"Darn!" said Mr. Phillips, puzzled. "I say darn, too, but who was it?"
"It was Darn Darner," Danny told him.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Phillips. "That scalawag!"
"He said his father said so," Nora explained.
"That will have to be looked into," Mr. Phillips remarked. "Now you children climb into the buggy and I will take you home. I want to have a talk with your mother."
"She's not to home," said Chris.
"Mebbe she'll be back," observed Nora, looking at the sun. "It's gettin' on towards supper time."
"We'll see," was Mr. Phillips' only comment as he placed Jerry on the front seat and helped Celia Jane in beside him.
Danny and Chris and Nora, in the meantime, had climbed into the back seat. Mr. Phillips clucked to the horses and they trotted off into town.
Jerry felt greatly comforted to be riding home with this big, pleasant man, and the cruel edge of Darn's words began to wear off. He felt that this new friend's words, "That will have to be looked into," meant almost as much as though he had said, "I'll see that nothing of the sort happens."
His body was still shaken, at longer and longer intervals, by shuddering sobs, but when the Mullarkey home was reached, they had subsided and he was enjoying the unaccustomed buggy ride.
Mrs. Mullarkey was home, and she came running out to see why her children were being brought back in a buggy.
"Who's hurt," she asked anxiously, "that you're bringing them home in a buggy?"
"None of them is hurt, Mrs. Mullarkey," Mr. Phillips assured her quickly, and helped the children out. "I'm Tom Phillips. I knew your husband quite well. I found these children crying in the road because Mr. Darner's young scalawag of a son had told them that Jerry Elbow was to be taken to the poor farm."
"Oh, Jerry, you blessed child!" crooned Mother 'Larkey, taking Jerry in her arms. "And you to find it out from some one else when I'd been trying for this week past to get up courage enough to tell you."
"Mother!" cried Nora in a shocked voice.
"It's true, then?" asked Mr. Phillips.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Mullarkey, drawing Jerry tightly to her. "I don't want to let you go, Jerry, but Dan's insurance money is all gone and how I am to make enough to keep the bodies and souls of all you children together I don't know. I love you as though you were my own, you're that sweet and gentle."
Jerry began crying again, but softly thistime, because he knew Mother 'Larkey wouldn't let him go if she could help it. She kissed him and turned to Mr. Phillips.
"Mr. Darner told me I'd sooner or later have to let some of my own children go there or be adopted out, if I didn't consent to Jerry's going. I'm at the end of my string."
"I see," observed Mr. Phillips gently. "I didn't know just how Dan Mullarkey left you fixed, but I can do something to help you. Darner can be made to listen to reason and I can bring some influence to bear upon him. I don't see why the county can't let you have as much as it would cost it to keep Jerry at the farm. I belong to the same lodge as Dan did and we'll help you some there. I'll find something for Danny to do. He can be earning a little money in the summer time and help you out that way."
"You're an angel if ever there was one in this world, Mr. Phillips," said Mrs. Mullarkey. "If the county will allow me for Jerry's keep, I'll take better care of him than he'd get at any institution and it would help me in keeping the brood together."
"I'll see what I can do," said Mr. Phillips.
"Then Jerry won't hafta go?" Celia Jane questioned.
"I hope not," he replied. "Keep a stiff upper lip, Jerry!"
"I—I'll try," Jerry promised, already feeling certain that the danger which threatened him had passed.
"I'll come back in a day or two," said Mr. Phillips, "and let you know what I have been able to do."
Jerry watched him from over Mother 'Larkey's shoulder as he drove off. He thought he had never seen a man who looked so big and strong and as though he could make people do just as he wanted them to.
On Wednesday Mr. Phillips reported that while the matter of allowing Mrs. Mullarkey to keep Jerry had not been decided, he would not be taken to the poor farm on that day at least and he thought it could be arranged that he shouldn't go there at all. Consequently it was with a joyous heart that Jerry awoke early on the morning of the great day that the circus was to reach town. He had slept fitfully all night, thinking of the circus and fearing that he might not wake up in time. Mrs. Mullarkey had promised to call him, but for once Jerry had waked up himself.
He heard a stir downstairs and called to Mother 'Larkey that he was up. He roused Chris, who in turn called Danny, but Danny was a sound sleeper and merely turned on his side. Chris and Jerry then rolled him over and pulled the covers off and finally pummeled the sleeper into a state of semi-consciousness.
"It's time for the circus to unload," they told him. "We're all dressed, ready to go."
Danny opened one swollen, sleepy eye, "Aw, it's not time yet," he muttered drowsily and went back to sleep.
"All right, let him be," said Chris in disgust. "We ain't got time to wake him. We'll miss the unloadin' if we do."
So Jerry and Chris tiptoed carefully downstairs, for they knew Mrs. Mullarkey had gone back to bed, and ran through the dim light of dawn to the railway station.
The circus train was in and the unloading had already begun. Nearly all the small boys in town seemed to be perched on fences, roofs, and in trees, watching the proceedings. The circus men were tired and cross and made the children keep out of the way.
Jerry was dreadfully excited and exhilarated upon seeing four elephants on the opposite side of the train, and his delight knew no bounds when one of them was hitched to a heavy circus wagon on a car and pulled it down a board incline to the road. The funny,awkward animal walked right along as though the wagon were as light as a feather. Many of the boys complained because the sides of the wagons in which the wild animals were kept were closed, but not so Jerry. As long as he could feast his eyes on the elephants he was content. He had but a passing glance for the humpbacked camels and the two long-necked giraffes until after the elephants had been taken away.
When the train had been unloaded and the last wagons were hauled away, the troop of small boys—and many older ones and grown men as well—followed them out to the circus ground.
Already one big tent and several smaller ones had been erected and the elephants and the other animals were not to be seen. There was a delightfully circusy smell of oils and sawdust and hay and animals pervading the air. Then through it all came another smell that made Jerry and Chris and many of the boys and men sniff. It was the smell of bacon and eggs frying. The cooks were preparing breakfast for the circus troupe.
"I'm hungry," said a man back of Jerry tothe two boys with him. "We'd better get home. Mother will be waiting breakfast for us." They left the circus grounds reluctantly, the two boys stopping every now and then to look back.
That inviting odor of frying bacon and eggs was a clarion call to breakfast to scores of the onlookers, and the crowd fairly melted away until not more than a dozen boys were left, among whom Jerry saw Darn Darner.
"I'm awful hungry," said Chris, after they had wandered around half an hour longer. "Let's go home. I guess we've seen about all there is to see."
Jerry protested. "Let's wait a while longer an' mebbe they'll bring the el'funts out."
"Mebbe they will," said Chris and seemed straightway to forget all about his hunger. They went about the tents again and once caught sight of the elephants and camels in the second largest tent, as one of the canvasmen came out and held back the flaps. He was followed by another man with a thick, black beard, who wore something that flashed in his shirt front.
"Gee, look at the size of that diamond!" exclaimed Darn Darner's voice back of Jerry.
The man looked sharply about. Jerry thought he seemed very much surprised and was afraid he might be angry because he and Chris were so close to the tent. He started to go away, but upon hearing the man speak he stood rooted to the spot.
"What in the world has become of all the small boys?" the black-bearded man had asked the other. "There were hundreds about a few minutes ago. Don't they know they can get to see the circus if they want to carry water for the elephants?"
"I guess the boys in this town never saw a circus before, Mr. Burrows," replied the canvasman.
"Here, you," Mr. Burrows called to Darn. "Want to earn a ticket to the circus?"
"No," said Darn loftily. "I've got a reserved box seat." He turned and walked off.
"What did I tell you, Sam?" laughed Mr. Burrows. "There's money in this jay town and we're going to get a bunch of it."
Jerry stepped hastily forward, a light of joy dancing in his eyes, with Chris treadingon his heels. "Please, mister," said Jerry eagerly, "we'll carry water for the elephants."
"We want to see the circus," added Chris.
"You're too little to carry water," said Sam. "Where're all the bigger kids?"
"They've gone home to breakfast," replied Chris. "Please, mister, we can carry water. I'm big enough."
"Yes, I guess you're big enough," said the man with the diamond in his shirt, "but the elephants are awful thirsty and it will take you a long time. Sam, you see if you can find some other boys to help you."
Sam departed instantly.
"Where'll we get the water?" asked Chris.
"From that house across the road. You'll have to pump it. Your brother there had better go home; he's too little to carry water."
"No, I ain't, mister," said Jerry eagerly. "I'm awful strong for my age."
"How old are you?" asked the man.
"I don't know," Jerry confessed. Then, fearful of losing this opportunity to see the circus, he continued, "I guess I'm almost seven or mebbe eight."
"You don't know how old you are!" exclaimed the man. "You look much younger than seven or eight."
"He's not my brother," Chris explained. "He's a orfum my father found when he was alive. My brother's at home with mother and my sisters. We couldn't wake him up. But Jerry's awful strong."
"A orfum, hey? And awful strong?" said the man and seemed to be studying over something in his mind. "Have you ever seen a circus?" he asked.
"No, sir," they both assured him and Chris continued: "Mother did once, just after she was married to father. She wished she could bring us all to the circus but she didn't have money enough."
"H'm," said the man. "I used to be a orfum myself and I know how you feel."
"Did you?" asked Jerry, and he smiled up at the man, unafraid, with a sort of fellow feeling.
"I sure did," the man smiled down at Jerry. "I got to see my first circus through carrying water for the elephants."
At this moment Sam returned with fourother boys, all older than either Jerry or Chris.
"I never saw boys so shy of a circus before, Mr. Burrows," he said. "They've melted away as though the circus were a plague. But I guess we can get along with these."
"All right, Sam," replied Mr. Burrows, "but I want you to pump the water and let the boys do the carrying. These two boys," and he put a hand on Jerry's head and one on Chris's shoulder, "have never seen a circus. They'll help carry water and be sure that they get a matinee ticket apiece."
"All right, sir," replied Sam. "Come on, boys."
"Let these two carry a pail between them," continued Mr. Burrows, "I don't want them breaking their backs."
Jerry felt an unusual warmth go surging through him. He was going to carry water for the elephants and get a ticket to the circus, after all! He was gladder than ever that he had bought the cough medicine for Kathleen with the black half-dollar. He looked up at Mr. Burrows, and it was such a look as a friendless dog might give to a manwho had just petted it and given it something to eat.
"Thank you, mister, for lettin' me carry water for the el'funts," said Jerry.
"That's all right," replied the man. "Here, there's a dime for peanuts. Have a good time."
Jerry was too surprised to take the dime and Mr. Burrows pressed it into his hand and went back into the tent before Jerry had recovered.
"The boss must have taken a fancy to you!" said Sam to Jerry. "Well, them elephants is awful thirsty and we've got to get to work. Come on."
Jerry, envied of all the boys, put the dime in his blouse pocket. He seemed to be treading on air instead of the solid earth as he followed Sam to another part of the ground where the boys were given large pails.
He felt in his blouse pocket every now and then to make sure that he really had a dime and also that it had not grown wings and flown out of his pocket, or made a hole in it and dropped out. It was always there and his feeling of exhilaration at his good fortune kept up, despite the hard work of carryingthat pailful of water from the pump across the street to the back of the second biggest tent, where he and Chris emptied it into a kind of a tub. There were half a dozen of the tubs to be filled, and before the third one was full Jerry's arms and back ached, but he gritted his teeth and kept on. He would show them that he wasn't too little to carry water for the elephants.
Under the ache in his arms and back, his exhilaration at the possession of the dime and the prospect of a ticket to the circus wilted but did not die. When the fourth tub was about full he sat down on the pump platform while Sam filled their pail with water.
"El'funts must drink a nawful lot of water," he said.
"Gettin' tired, ain't you?" asked Sam.
"No, I could carry water all day, I guess. It makes my back ache some because I ain't used to it."
"You kids have made more trips than the other boys," said Sam, "and I ain't going to fill your pail clear full any more. Don't try to go so fast with it. There's plenty of time."
"We want to carry enough for two tickets," said Jerry quickly. "Chris wants to see the circus, too, don't you, Chris?"
"You bet," replied Chris.
"You'll get a ticket apiece, all right, as long as I'm on the job," said Sam, giving them the pail not much more than half full of water.
"That's a whole lot easier to carry," Jerry assured Sam, as they started for the tub.
It seemed to Jerry that he and Chris had been carrying water for hours by the time the last tub was full. He felt almost starving. The sun seemed to be 'way up and he was so tired and hot that he was about ready to drop; but he found that when the work was done and Sam gave each boy a ticket it wasn't very late, after all.
"It's just nine o'clock," said Sam, "and you kids'd better scoot home and get some breakfast. Just show your mothers them tickets if they scold you for stayin' so long and I guess they'll hush right up. The matinee starts at 2:15, but if you want to see the menagerie, you'd better come about half-past one or right after the parade."
Those magic pieces of paper, which Jerry and Chris held tightly in their hands for fear of losing them, made them forget their hunger and weariness and they set off for home at full speed. They raced breathless into the house and found that Mrs. Mullarkey and Nora had finished washing the breakfast dishes.
"Look, mother!" cried Chris, panting for breath after almost every word, "we've got tickets for the circus for helpin' carry water for the el'funts!"
"Oh, how nice!" said Mrs. Mullarkey. "They will be tickets to paradise to you. Now you'll get to see the circus, after all. But you must be about starved."
"We are, almost," Jerry admitted.
"Gee, my arms ache," Chris remarked.
"You boys had better rub each other's backs with liniment while I get your breakfast," Mother 'Larkey said, getting a bottle down from the cupboard.
"Did Danny get a ticket, too?" Celia Jane asked.
"No," said Chris.
"Why, where is Danny?" inquired his mother.
"I don't know," replied Chris. "He was asleep when we left. We tried to wake him but he wouldn't get up."
"Land's sakes!" exclaimed Mrs. Mullarkey. "He must still be upstairs, fast asleep! I heard you calling him and then heard you tiptoeing downstairs and out of the house and thought he was with you." She went to the foot of the stairs and called and the sleepy voice of Danny answered:
"All right. Is it time for the circus to unload?"
"It unloaded hours ago," she replied, "and Chris and Jerry have got back with each of them a ticket to the circus for helping carry water for the elephants."
"Why didn't you call me!" wailed Danny.
"Chris and Jerry called you," answered his mother. "I heard them and heard you answer. It's your own fault for being such a sleepyhead."
It didn't take Danny long to dress and get downstairs, his hair all tousled and his eyes still heavy with sleep. "Let's see your tickets," he demanded.
Chris let him see his, but kept a possessive hold of one end. There it was:
Burrows and Fairchild'sMAMMOTH CIRCUS ANDMENAGERIEADMIT ONEComplimentary
Burrows and Fairchild'sMAMMOTH CIRCUS ANDMENAGERIEADMIT ONEComplimentary
"That's a ticket, all right," Danny remarked. "Was that all you had to do to get it—carry water for the el'funts?"
"Yes," replied Chris, "but it took hours and hours. I'm sore all over."
"So'm I," said Jerry.
"Why didn't you make me wake up?"
"We called you and pounded you and turned you over," Chris replied, "but you went back to sleep."
"Why didn't you kick me or pull me out of bed?" Danny asked. "Then mebbe I'd've got a ticket, too."
"Mebbe you can, anyway," said Celia Jane. "The el'funts'll want a drink at noon."
"I'll go out and see," said Danny and was hurrying off at once, but Mrs. Mullarkey made him wait for breakfast. He bolted the oatmeal and bread and raced out of the house.
"I'm glad I'm not a sleepy-head like Danny," said Chris.
"So'm I," echoed Jerry.
Jerry could hardly wait until time for the parade. He and Chris were both too excited to play; they stayed in the house most of the time and questioned Mother 'Larkey about what she had seen at the circus the time her husband had taken her to one in the city. She was busy sewing on a dress for Mrs. Johnson which was wanted by Saturday night and was at length obliged to send them out of doors with orders to stay out until dinner was ready.
They soon exhausted each other's conversation relative to circuses and their knowledge and guesses about what they would see, and fell silent. And the minutes dragged their slow length out towards eleven o'clock.
They could smell the mush and potatoes frying for their early dinner when Danny returned from the circus ground. They knewat once that he hadn't succeeded in getting a "ticket to paradise", as Mother 'Larkey had called their circus passes, nevertheless Chris asked:
"Did you get a ticket?"
"No," replied Danny, sitting down dejectedly. After a while they knew he didn't intend to say any more. Jerry waited as long as he could and then asked in turn:
"Didn't the el'funts want any water for dinner?"
"No," stated Danny glumly.
That little word "No" seemed to be all that Danny cared to say about his experience, and the following silence lasted fully ten minutes. Danny was the first to break it. He did so after apparently awakening to the fact that dinner was preparing. He sniffed the penetrating odor of frying potatoes and mush that had got a little burned, and sat up.
"Gee, but I'm hungry," he said and sniffed again.
"Wasn't there anything you could do for a ticket?" Chris asked.
"No. The man said the early bird got the worm at the circus as well as in the garden."
After a time Jerry woke to the fact that Danny was looking at him out of the corners of his eyes in a peculiar, questioning manner that made him feel uneasy. He turned his glance away.
"I'll give you both my tops an' the shiny horseshoe nail an' baseball for your circus ticket," Danny proposed.
Jerry's hand flew protectingly to the pocket of his blouse. "No!" he cried loudly. "I won't! I earned it myself!"
"Well, I ain't tryin' to take it away from you, am I?" Danny asked, aggrieved. "I jest offered you some of my things for it. There ain't no law against offerin' to trade, I guess. I'll teach you to skate and let you use the skates I got at Christmas if you will. An' I'll feed your white rabbit for you."
"No," said Jerry, edging away from him, ready to run to the house if Danny should try to grab the ticket. "I earned the ticket and I'm a-goin' to see the circus."
"Dinner's ready, children," called Mrs. Mullarkey. "You'll have to hurry to get a good place to see the parade."
Jerry was ready to start without havinganything to eat. He was too excited to be hungry, but Mother 'Larkey made him eat so he "wouldn't get too faint to enjoy the circus." It was a race between the boys to see who would finish first. Chris won. Danny, who confessed to being hungry, ate twice as much as Jerry and Chris.
"Now you children keep together at the parade," admonished Mrs. Mullarkey, as they were ready to start. "You can follow the parade out to the circus grounds for the free show outside, but Danny, you keep with Nora and Celia Jane and see that they get home all right."
Jerry didn't see how the circus could be much more fascinating than the parade with all its cages open so you could see the animals. And with the clowns, too, especially the one with the donkey, going through such laughable antics. But he was a little disappointed that the elephants didn't jump a fence or do anything like that during the parade. However, the beautiful ladies in gorgeous raiment who rode in the little houses strapped to the elephants' backs made him forget about their fence-jumping proclivities.
When the parade was over, Jerry and the Mullarkey children, together with a hundred or more small boys and girls, followed the steam-throated calliope through the principal street of the town out to the tents, fascinated by the loudness of the music and the escape of jets of steam as the player fingered the keys. It seemed to Jerry that there couldn't in all the wide world be such heavenly music. Celia Jane and Chris shared his enthusiasm, but Nora confessed to liking a fiddle better and Danny asserted that the music of the trombone was easier on the ears.
The free exhibition on the little platform outside the side-show tent had all the fascination of the unknown for Jerry and Chris and Celia Jane and Nora, but not for Danny, who had been to the vaudeville theater twice and who knew that this outside sample never could come up to the glories to be revealed inside for fifty cents, or a dollar and a half for reserved seats in the boxes, and was critical.
The dancing girl in short skirts and the man with the beard which fell to his feet and the very red-faced snake charmer merely whettedhis appetite for what was to come, while to Jerry and the rest of the Mullarkey children it was a substantial part of the feast itself.
The free show seemed to Jerry not to have much more than started when the raucous voice of the ballyhoo announced:
"This, ladies and gents, concludes the free show. The main show will not begin for half an hour, thirty minutes—just time enough to see the side show, the world's greatest congress of freaks and monstrosities. See the sword-swallower from India to whom a steel sword is no more than a string of spaghetti to an Italian. Kelilah, the famous dancer of the Nile, whose graceful contortions have delighted the eyes and moved the hearts of kings. See Major Wee-Wee, the smallest man in the world, no bigger than a two-year-old baby, and Tom Morgan, the giant who stands seven feet three inches in his stocking feet. They are all there—every kind of human freak from the living skeleton to the fat woman who weighs four hundred pounds. The price is the same to one and all—twenty-five cents, only a quarter of a dollar. This way and get your tickets for the side show.There is just time to take in all its wonders before the big show in the main tent begins."
The promise of all these delights proved irresistible to Jerry and Chris and they left the children and were almost first in line, but the ticket taker refused them admittance.
"Those tickets are not good to the side show," he said. "They admit you to the main tent."
Stunned at this disaster, Jerry and Chris slunk under the ropes at the entrance and rejoined Danny and Nora and Celia Jane. They stood in silence as the crowd surged around the ticket seller for the side show and watched the people stream through the door. Never had the lack of "twenty-five cents, only a quarter of a dollar", meant so much to any small boy as it meant to Jerry and Chris. Some of the people were already going into the main tent, passing up the glories of the side show. Jerry wondered if they, too, didn't have the necessary quarter of a dollar.
"It would be just grand to see all them freaks," sighed Celia Jane. "If I could only see just half the circus."
Jerry, his ticket still in his hand, looked up and saw Danny glancing covetously at it.
"What'll you take for your ticket?" he asked eagerly. "I'll give you anything of mine you want."
"I won't trade," replied Jerry, stuffing the ticket into his blouse pocket. "I'm a-goin' to see the circus."
Danny made the same proposition to Chris but Chris also refused. There was nothing of Danny's that could compensate Jerry or Chris for missing the circus, especially when they were right there on the ground with their tickets in their hands.
After the crowd had disappeared—part into the side show, part into the main tent, some to their homes and some to wander about the grounds—Jerry and Chris were debating whether they should go into the big tent at once or wait until time for the main performance, when they observed Danny, who had edged away from them, talking in a low voice to Celia Jane. From the motion of Celia Jane's head and the entreating position of Danny's hands, they knew she was refusing some request of his.
If they had not just then become absorbed in watching some circus employee leading two big, fat, white horses out of a tent they would have seen Celia Jane's negative shakes of the head become weaker as Danny's attitude became more and more commanding, and all that occurred afterward might never have happened. But they didn't look around.
When the horses had disappeared, Jerry spoke:
"They might start early," he said. "Let's go in now, Chris."
"All right, let's," Chris replied.
They turned to tell the other Mullarkey children good-by and saw that Celia Jane was crying. Her shoulders shook and she seemed to be in the utmost despair.
"What's the matter with Celia Jane?" Chris asked.
"I don't know," said Nora. "What ails her, Danny?"
"I don't know," Danny asserted quickly. "What're you cryin' for, Celia Jane?"
"I want to see the circus," sobbed Celia Jane. She raised her face and there were tears running down it.
"You ain't got no ticket, have you?" asked Danny. "Nor fifty cents?"
"N-n-no," sobbed Celia Jane.
"Then there ain't no chance at all of your gettin' in, is there?"
"I ain't never seen no circus," moaned Celia Jane.
"Come on, Jerry," said Chris; "let's go in now, so's we won't miss anything if they start early."
At that Celia Jane started crying harder than ever and Jerry stood still, a curious something making his heart beat faster and his throat growing all choky.
"Let's go home, Celia Jane," proposed Nora, in a soothing tone. "Mebbe next time we can go. They might let us carry water for the elephants and earn a ticket to the circus, even if we are girls."
"I want to see it now," sobbed Celia Jane.
Jerry began to feel sort of shuddery inside and his mouth puckered up the way it did when he felt like crying.
He was awfully sorry that Celia Jane didn't have a ticket too. He knew he would be crying out of sympathy if Celia Jane kepton that way, and started towards Chris, who had gone halfway towards the entrance to the tent and then had stopped to wait for him. His joy at the thought of what he was going to witness was clouded through the fact that Celia Jane could not see and enjoy it too. He walked very slowly towards Chris and looked back at Celia Jane.
"Oh, J-J-Jerry!" cried the weeping girl, "I-I-I want to see the circus too."
At that appeal Jerry felt as though his heart had stopped beating and was sinking down into his bare feet. He winked hard to keep the tears from coming. He just couldn't bear to see Celia Jane so heartbroken about not being able to see the circus.
"You can have my t-t-ticket," he said slowly and pulled the treasured bit of blue cardboard out of his pocket. There were tears in his eyes but he walked slowly to Celia Jane, holding out the ticket to her.
"Oh, Jerry!" cried Celia Jane. "Will you really give it to me of your own free will?"
Jerry couldn't speak at first. He nodded his head, but Celia Jane just took one end of the ticket between her fingers.
"Do you give it to me, Jerry?" she asked, in a voice in which there was no trace of weeping. Yet the tears stood on her face.
"Yes," said Jerry at last and let go of the ticket. "You can have it, Celia Jane."
"Then I give it to Danny," said Celia Jane and straightway handed the ticket to Danny, who snatched it and ran to the entrance of the main tent.
Jerry was so surprised at the treachery of Celia Jane after her recent evidences of affection and at the suddenness of it all that he could not even cry out,—could do nothing but stare after Danny. He saw the precious bit of pasteboard taken from Danny's outstretched hand by the ticket-taker and dropped into a box and then saw Chris give up his ticket and go in.
"Celia Jane!" he heard Nora cry, "I'm going to tell mother what you did to Jerry. You'll catch it."
"Danny!" Jerry at last found his voice, and it rose in a forlorn wail. "The ticket is mine! Danny!"
Jerry had forgotten how easily Celia Janecould make the tears come whenever she liked, no matter if she didn't really want to cry. He would show that Celia Jane that she had gone too far this time. He didn't know what he would do, but turned to go to her. As he did so, a crowd of persons going to the circus passed between them and when they had passed he saw Celia Jane running for home with Nora following at a slower pace.
"Why, what's the matter, little boy? Why are you crying?" he heard a man ask.
Jerry felt the hot tears of bitter disappointment coming and he did not want all those persons to see him crying. So he turned and ran blindly around the big tent; when he was alone he flung himself down on the ground and sobbed out his grief, with face pressed into the grass.
Never, never, never would he forgive Celia Jane for her perfidy,—nor Danny either for taking the ticket, when he knew that it had been given to Celia Jane because Jerry thought she was really crying because she wanted to see the circus. He would really run away this time. He would run awaywithout going back to tell Mother 'Larkey and Kathleen and Nora good-by.
Now he would not get to see the elephants jumping the fence, nor the trapeze performers, nor the dancing pony. Even the trained seals took on a halo of enchantment now that the magic ticket that was to open all those joys to him was irrevocably gone.
His sobbing rose in a renewed outburst, but even as he sobbed he felt something shake his foot very slightly. He stopped sobbing so hard. There was no further shaking of his foot and he again gave himself up to the bitterness of his grief.
Then there came a tug at his foot; it was shaken harder than before and then pulled. Very much startled, Jerry sat up and found himself staring into a pair of twinkling yet sympathetic eyes and a face which was just as white as chalk, with very, very red lips. It was a man, and he wore a white skullcap over his head and a white, loose sort of gown with blue dots all over it.
It was Whiteface, the clown, sitting on his heels right there in front of him! That very surprising individual suddenly turned a handspring, and without standing up, kicked his heels together straight up into the air and then sat down in front of Jerry, leaned his head on his elbow and smiled with twinkling eyes, without uttering a word.