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.
"Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head! Blue-eyed beauty!" chanted Darn, thrusting his face between two palings of the fence and sticking out his tongue.
Then Danny picked up a board and, flanked by Chris, advanced to the fence, whereat Darn took to his heels, shouting, "Blue-eyed beauty! Ole Danny dumb-head!" as loud as he could.
At the end of the alley he turned and shouted,
"A pants' leg for an el'funt's tail! Oh, my gorry!"
When he disappeared from sight, the three boys surveyed the elephant's skin lying on the ground.
"Let's not play any more," said Danny.
"I'm tired of the ole circus, anyway," replied Chris.
They went into the house, Jerry slowly following them. Even he could not 'maginary the old green wrapper and the stuffed brown coat sleeve and blue trouser leg into an elephant any more.
