"Yes, yes; give him time to breathe, children," cried Peter. "I'll tell you what," he added to Sir William Kay; "I've never seen a better performance on any stage." And he slapped his leg in confirmation. The Consul was a man whose sole claim to beauty lay in the fact that he always looked extremely clean. He was meagre and small, with very short legs, but he was without consciousness of these deficiencies; in the presence of the Apollo Belvedere, for instance, it had never occurred to him to draw comparisons. Nature, however, will out in some way, and from childhood Peter Senter had had a profound admiration for feats of strength, vaulting, tumbling, and the like. "I'll tell you what," he repeated to Sir William; "I'll have the fellow exhibited; I'll start him at my own cost. Here all this time—two whole years—he has been our gondolier, Ercoly has, and nothing more; for I hadn't a suspicion that he had the least talent in this line. But, sir, he's a regular high-flier! And A Number One!"
Meanwhile the children were crowding closely round their clown, and peering up in order still to see his grin, which was now partly hidden, owing to his drooped head; the three Kings of Orient, especially, were very pressing in their attentions, pinching his legs to see if they were real.
"Come, children, this will be a good time for our second song," said Miss Senter, making a diversion. "Take hands, now, in a circle; yes—round the clown, if you wish. There—that's right." She signalled to the music to stop, and then, beginning, led the little singers herself:
| "Though we're here on foreign shores, |
| We are all devotion |
| To our land of Stars and Stripes, |
| Far across the ocean. |
| Yankee doodle doodle doo, |
| Yankee doodle dandy, |
| Buckwheat cakes are very good, |
| And so's molasses candy." |
Singing this gayly to the well-known fife-like tune, round and round danced the children in a circle, holding each other's hands, the English and Italians generously joining with the little Americans in praise of the matutinal cakes which they had never seen; the Consuless had drilled her choir beforehand, and they sang merrily and well. The first four lines of this ditty had been composed by Peter himself for the occasion.
"I hear you haf written this vurra fine piece!" said a Russian princess, addressing him.
"Oh no," answered the Consul; "I only wrote the first four lines; the chorus is one of our national songs, you know."
"But those first four lines—their sentiment ees so fine, so speerited!" said the princess.
"Well, they're neat," Peter admitted, modestly.
The clown, having recovered his breath, cut a caper. Instantly "Yankee Doodle" came to an end, and the children all stopped to watch him.