Lebbeus Mitchell - The Circus Comes to Town

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"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 knees
And 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 a day 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 hurt and 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 as fast 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 something
till 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 will be 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 home
and 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, that _that_ man 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 was coming 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 Kathleen had 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. She was 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.

CHAPTER V

THE GREEN ELEPHANT BUYS AN AUDIENCE

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 Danny Mullarkey
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 legs and 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 from the 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 call _that_ a 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 and reluctant 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 by a 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 do _you_ know 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.

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