"Inger Johanne, will you be so good as to go to school? It's very late"—it was Father calling from the office window; so there was an end to that pleasure.
Down by the steamboat-landing, in the big open square, the circus tent had been set up. Karsten and I were down there two hours before the performance was to begin. I was the first of all the spectators to go inside. It was a tremendously big, high tent, three rows of seats around it, and a staging of rough boards for the orchestra. Anything so magnificent you never saw. At last the performance began.
But to describe what goes on at a circus, that I won't do. About ordinary things, such as are happening every day at home, I can write very well, as you know, but anything so magnificent as that circus I can't describe.
I was nearly out of my wits, people said afterwards. I stood up on the seat—those behind me were angry, but that didn't bother me at all—clapped my hands and shouted "Bravo!" and "Hurrah!" Towards the last the riders, when they came in, gave me a special salute in that elegant way, you know, holding up their whips before one eye. I liked that awfully well. I was fairly beside myself with joy.
Well, now I knew what I wanted to be: I wanted to be a circus-rider! For that was the grandest and jolliest thing in the whole world. Did you ever feel about yourself that you were going to be something great, something more than every one else, as if you stood on a high mountain with all the other people far below you? Well, I had felt like that, and now I knew what it was that I should be.
I lay awake far into the night and thought and thought. Yes, it was plain, I should have to run away with the circus-riders. I could not have a better opportunity. Certainly Father and Mother would never let me go. It would be horrid to run away, but that was nothing; a circus-rider I must be, I saw that plainly. The worst was, all the oil I had heard that circus-riders must drink to keep themselves limber and light. Ugh! no, I would not drink oil; I would be light all the same, and awfully quick about hopping and dancing on the horses.
And after many years I would come back to the town. No one would know me at first, and every one would be so terribly surprised to learn that the graceful rider in blue velvet was the judge's Inger Johanne.
I forgot to say that we were to have two free tickets every evening because Father was town judge. The first evening Karsten and I went, but the second evening Mother said that the maids should go.
"You were there last night," said Mother. "We can't spend money on such foolishness; to-morrow evening you may go again."
Oh, how broken-hearted I was because I couldn't go to the circus that evening! and Mother called it foolishness! If she only knew I was going to be a circus-rider! I wouldn't dare tell her for all the world.