The Width of an Elephant's Tail
Jerry tried all the next day and the next to think what it was that the picture of the elephant jumping the fence almost made him remember, but it just wouldn't come and finally he gave up trying. After playing with Kathleen until Mother 'Larkey put her in the crib for her afternoon nap, he wandered out towards the woodshed from behind which he heard the voices of Danny and Celia Jane.
On the way an idea popped all of a sudden into his mind. The dazzling splendor of it first brought him to a dead halt and then set him running breathlessly to join the Mullarkey children. He found them all gathered about Danny, hungrily watching him eat a green apple.
"Couldn't we play circus!" he exclaimed, in eager excitement at the idea that had come to him.
"We could if we wanted to," replied Danny, in that superior, ardor-dampening way of his.
Jerry felt his enthusiasm for the idea oozing out of his bare toes. "I—Don't we want to, Danny?"
"Oh, yes, let's!" cried Nora eagerly. "I'm tired of ante-over and run-sheep-run and pump-pump-pull-away—"
"And hidin'-go-seek and tree-tag," interrupted Celia Jane. She turned to Jerry. "How do you play circus?"
"You just—just play it," he answered. "'Maginary you're an el'funt jumpin' a fence and all."
"I'll be the el'funt!" cried Danny.
"I want to be the el'funt," objected Chris.
"The el'funt's mine," Jerry asserted and he closed his lips tightly. Danny didn't have any right to that elephant. "I saw it first," he added.
"I said 'I'll be the el'funt' first, didn't I?" asked Danny.
"Jerry orter have first choice," said Nora, the conciliator, "seein' it was him thought of playin' circus."
"I guess I can jump the highest, can't I?" Danny asked in a tone that said as plain as day that that settled the matter.
"It's my el'funt!" insisted Jerry.
"You always take first choice," Chris complained.
"You could take turns about being el'funt," Nora suggested.
Jerry wanted with all his soul to play that sublime elephant jumping the fence and he summoned up all his courage. "I won't play," cried he, with a suspicious quiver of his lips. "I won't! I won't!"
"I'll let you be el'funt part of the time," Danny promised, "just to keep you from cryin'."
"I ain't goin' to cry," returned Jerry hotly. "I ain't!"
"We can't have a circus with just a el'funt," said Celia Jane.
"Of course, we can't," said Danny decisively and turned to Jerry. "What else'll we have?"
"Couldn't we have more'n one el'funt?" Jerry asked hopefully.
"What'd we want with more'n one el'funt?" Danny queried in scorn. "I guess one el'funt's enough for one circus. Anyway, we want something besides el'funts."
"What?" asked Jerry. "I ain't never seen a circus."
"No more have I," replied Danny.
"Can't you 'maginary something?" asked Celia Jane.
"We could ''maginary things'," interposed Nora, "but they might not be in a circus."
"There's more'n one circus picture up," said Jerry. "Darn Darner said there was one at Jenkins' corner and one on Jeffreys' barn. P'raps they'll tell us what's in a circus."
"Of course," said Danny. "It's funny I didn't think of that. It's usually me who thinks of everything. I'll be the first one at Jenkins' corner," and he was off at a run.
Thereupon they all followed at full speed. Any other rate of progress was too slow for them. Jerry ran as hard as he could, leaving Celia Jane behind and keeping right at Nora's side. It was more than a quarter of a mile to Jenkins' corner and Jerry felt that his legs were ready to give out and send him sprawling in the street before he got there, but he kept running just the same. Celia Jane tagged along, far in the rear, and called to Jerry to wait for her, but a boy couldn't stop and wait for a girl without Danny's making fun of him, so, as much as Jerry would have liked to rest, he kept pantingly on. He was glad to plump down flat on the ground in front of the billboard and rest till Nora and Celia Jane arrived.
"Whoopee! I'll be the clown!" exclaimed Chris, pointing to the poster which showed trapeze performers turning somersaults in the air, a clown playing ringmaster to a dancing white pony and a girl walking a tight rope.
"I'll be the dancin' pony!" cried Celia Jane.
"I'll be the rope-walker," Nora said.
"And what'll I be?" asked Jerry plaintively, feeling left entirely out in the cold.
"Why didn't you speak up and grab onto something before they were all taken?" asked Danny. "You've got a tongue, ain't you?"
"He could swing up in the air hanging by his hands," Celia Jane suggested.
"We ain't got no net like they have in the picture to catch him if he falls," Nora objected.
"That would be too dangerous for us kids to try," Danny stated. "Maybe the picture on Jeffreys' barn will suggest something."
Again they were off at a run. It was not far to the barn, where they all squatted on the ground, nonplussed at the picture of half a dozen funny little animals balancing toy balloons on their noses.
"What are they?" Jerry asked.
"They're some kind of a fish," returned Danny promptly.
"Fish nothing!" exclaimed Chris. "Who ever saw a fish with hair on it? They're some kind of animal."
"They've got fins," retorted Danny. "I'd like to know what kind of animals's got fins. Tell me that."
"I don't know," Chris confessed, "but what kind of fish has hair?"
"This kind," said Danny authoritatively.
"Mebbe it's half fish and half animal," Jerry ventured.
"Who ever heard—" Danny began but was interrupted by Nora.
"It tells under the picture what they are," she said. "Trained s-e-a-l-s, seals. That's what rich women get their coats from."
"Then Jerry can be a trained seal," said Danny. "He can have a ball of carpet rags for a balloon to balance on his nose."
"I don't think I could," Jerry protested. "I know it would fall off."
"Not if you practise enough," returned Danny. "Besides, that's all that's left for you. I guess if one seal can throw it to another and that seal catch it on its nose like it does in the picture, you ought to be able to balance it on your nose. All you'll have to do is to lie on your stummick on the ground and throw back your head."
So it was decided that Jerry should play the part of a trained seal in their circus. Mother 'Larkey got out a ball of carpet rags, when they reached home, for Jerry to balance on his nose in place of a balloon, and gave Danny an old green wrapper, just ready to be cut up into carpet rags, out of which to make his elephant costume. She made Chris a clown costume out of a piece of old white skirt upon which she sewed large dots of red and blue cloth.
The two following days were busy ones for Jerry if not quite so happy as for the Mullarkey children. He had made up his mind, after practising until his back, chest and neck ached from throwing his head back to balance the ball of carpet rags on his nose, that he didn't like trained seals and wasn't going to care to be one at the circus. Chris's clown costume was finished and looked very much like a white union suit miles too big for him.
Nora had become quite proficient at walking the tight rope, stretched between two poles in the yard about ten feet apart and two feet from the ground, if she remembered to keep one end of her balancing pole touching the ground all the time. Mrs. Mullarkey had decided that Celia Jane didn't need any costume to play the part of the dancing pony except her good, white dress that she probably wouldn't ruin this time as all she had to do was to dance.
Danny was having more than a peck of trouble. His elephant costume had all sorts of queer mishaps. He wanted to make it all himself, even to the sewing, and he couldn't sew for sour apples, as Nora very readily told him. Two small palm-leaf fans, fastened to an old cap of his father's so that they flopped with every movement, served as the elephant's ears, while out of an old brown coat sleeve Danny had fashioned what passed for an elephant's trunk. He fastened it with a string to the visor of the cap.
Danny was stuffing the leg of an old pair of blue trousers with straw, flattening it out until it bore a faint resemblance to the paddle-shaped tail of a beaver.
"What is that you're making?" Jerry asked.
"Why, that's the el'funt's tail!" said Danny. "Anybody could tell that."
He held it proudly up, displaying it in all its blue glory.
"El'funts' tails are small like a rope," Jerry remarked.
Danny laughed derisively. "Much you know about it! I guess a el'funt's about the biggest animal in the world and it wouldn't have a little ole tail like a rope."
"They are little, like a rope," Jerry insisted.
"How do you know they are?" asked Danny. "Just tell me how you know anything about it."
"I don't know, but I know," Jerry said, feeling all his obstinacy aroused by Danny's air of conscious superiority.
"There, you just said you didn't know," Celia Jane interposed, going to her elder brother's aid, as she always did in a dispute with Jerry.
"I didn't neither," asseverated Jerry.
"You said you didn't know," insisted Celia Jane.
"I don't know how I know," said Jerry, "but I know el'funts have little tails—like a rope."
"Have you ever been to a circus?" asked Chris.
"Not that I remember."
"Have you ever seen a el'funt?" pursued Danny.
"N-n-no, but it kind of seems as if I almost had."
"I guess you'd know if you had seen a el'funt, wouldn't you?"
"Y-y-yes," responded Jerry doubtfully.
"Then if you ain't ever been to a circus or seen a el'funt, I guess you don't know what you are talking about."
"El'funts' tails are little, like a rope," Jerry insisted.
"Like a cow's tail?" asked Celia Jane.
Jerry nodded assent. "Only they haven't so much hair on the end," he added.
"A el'funt's a hundred times as big as a cow, I guess," interposed Danny, "an' it wouldn't have a little tail like a cow. I guess I know more about it than you do. I'm older, ain't I?"
"Yes," Jerry admitted, "but they are little."
Nora now interposed. "Why don't you go see the picture of the elephant jumpin' the fence and find out?" she asked.
"Of course," said Chris. "The picture'll show whether they're small like a rope or great big ones."
"I'll beat you there," challenged Danny, as he dropped the flat, beaver-like elephant's tail and darted at a run out of the woodshed, followed by the others. As they lined up in front of the gaudy, delectable poster, there came a simultaneous gasp of amazement from all of them.
"Why, it ain't got no tail at all!" exclaimed Celia Jane.
True enough, there was no tail in evidence, as the elephant seemed to be headed straight towards them. Jerry flushed as they all turned and looked accusingly at him.
"Yah!" exclaimed Danny. "Mr. Smarty Know-it-all didn't know so much, after all!"
"Mebbe you just can't see it, but it's there," suggested Nora.
"That's so," Danny reluctantly admitted. "A el'funt's so big that when you stand right in front of it, its tail might not show at all, no matter how big it was."
"A little tail wouldn't," Jerry said quickly.
"A big one wouldn't either," Celia Jane asserted, taking sides against Jerry. "A el'funt's enough bigger to hide its tail."
"If it was very big it would show," said Jerry.
"The el'funt I play is goin' to have a tail all right," Danny informed the children collectively. "I ain't goin' to all the work of makin' a tail and then not wear it. I guess a el'funt's got some kind of a tail, anyway."
