The spring breeze bore to his senses the odour of the plum-blooms and the shouts of boys playing ball on the commons. "Poor old Pole!" he sighed, following the odour and the sound backward through nearly forty other springtimes, to the first and only circus he had ever attended. He and Pole had run away to see it, in days when shows were forbidden ground. How vividly he remembered the whole glittering pageant, from the gaily caparisoned horses with their nodding red plumes, down through the gilded coaches, with mirror panels, to the last painted fool, riding backward on his donkey.
The sudden opening of the shop door rang a bell above his head. He started guiltily, jerking in his head in such haste that he struck it with a bang against the window sash. His first impulse was to sweep the papers on his desk out of sight, but as he recognized the voice of the genial drummer who kept him supplied with coffin plates and trimmings, he was overpowered by a longing to unburden his soul. So strong was the desire that he yielded to it incontinently, and leaning over the counter and fixing his anxious little eyes on the drummer he almost whispered:—
"Between you and me and the gate-post, Bailey, what would you do if you had a circus left you by will?"
The drummer's laugh at what he supposed was intended for a joke was checked in the middle by the tragic earnestness of the questioner, who with a wiggle of his thumb beckoned him mysteriously to inspect the legal papers.
"There!" said he, "set down and give me your advice."
Seeing that the time for selling coffin-plates was not yet come, Bailey gave his attention to discovering on which side Snathers preferred the advice to fall, and being as voluble in giving advice as in the selling of goods, it was not long before he had nearly convinced his customer that, as a side-line to the undertaking business, there was nothing on earth so desirable as a circus. "Sell it?" he exclaimed in conclusion, "Not by a jugful! It will make your fortune, Snathers, sure."
"But it will make talk," protested Wex, going back to his first argument with the provoking tenacity of slow minds. "I'm afraid it will hurt the undertaking, for there'll be them as will say they wouldn't have a showman performin' the last solemn rites for them, an' there'll be others to say a man has no right to carry on a business that's a stumblin' block and an offence." He was thinking of Sade.
"Oh, that doesn't cut any ice," answered the drummer, cheerfully, as he closed the door behind him. "Go in and win!"
The news travelled fast and before dark Wex had been advised to sell his circus, to run it on shares, to have the animals killed and stuffed as a nucleus for a village museum. He was assured of success, warned of ignominious failure, congratulated on his luck and condoled with for the burden laid upon him. He was admonished that it was his Christian duty to refuse the legacy, and told by his next visitor that he would be a darn fool if he did.
He had aged visibly when he reached home, where he knew the news had preceded him by the voice of his mother in the kitchen, high and shrill above the sputter of the frying fat. She stood, hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, fork in hand, talking to some one in the back door.