Chapter Eight.
How Dickie went to the Circus.
“Has you ever seen a circus, Andoo?”
“Aye, missie.”
“When has you seen it?”
“Years ago, little missie—years ago. When I was a fool.”
“Is you fool now, Andoo?”
“Maybe, missie, maybe,” (with a grim smile); “but I surely was then.”
Dickie dismissed the subject for the moment, and turned her attention to the little green barrow full of sticks which she had just wheeled into the potting shed. There was a pleasant mingled scent of apples, earth, and withered leaves there; from the low rafters hung strings of onions, pieces of bass, and bunches of herbs, and in one corner there was a broken-backed chair, and Andrew’s dinner upon it tied up in a blue checked handkerchief. Bending over his pots and mould by the window in his tall black hat, and looking as brown and dried-up as everything round him, was Andrew himself, and Dickie stood opposite, warmly muffled up, but with a pink tinge on her small round nose from the frosty air. She was always on good terms with Andrew, and could make him talk sometimes when he was silent for everyone else; so, although she very seldom understood his answers, they held frequent conversations, which seemed quite satisfactory on both sides.
Her questions to-day about the circus had been called forth by the fact that she had seen, when out walking with Nurse, a strange round white house in a field near the village. On asking what it was, she had been told that it was a tent. What for? A circus. And what was a circus? A place where horses went round and round. What for? Little girls should not ask so many questions. Dickie felt this to be unsatisfactory, and she accordingly made further inquiries on the first opportunity.