In the evening, when it was time for the performance to begin, I went down to the steamboat-landing just the same. The fat lady with the shining black eyes sat there selling tickets; the people crowded about the entrance, some had already begun to stream in; the big flag which served as a door was constantly being drawn aside to let people in, and at every chance I peeked behind the flag. To think that I wasn't going to get in to-night! Suppose I ran home and asked Father very nicely for a ticket; perhaps there was still time.
"Won't you have a ticket?" asked the black-eyed lady. She said she remembered me from the evening before when I had been so delighted.
"No, I have no money," said I, and my whole face grew red. It really was embarrassing, but since she asked me I had to tell the truth.
"If you will stand there by the door and take the tickets, you may come in and look on," she said.
Wouldn't I! Just the thing for me! Not even a cat should slip in without a ticket. I was very strict at the door and pushed away the sailors who wanted to force themselves in. I was terribly clever, the lady said.
And so I went in again, and enjoyed it just as much as I had the evening before. I was tremendously proud of having earned my ticket, for in that way it was as if I were taken at once right into the circus troupe. Every single night they performed I would take the tickets—yet no one in the whole town would know that Inger Johanne meant to go away with the circus. I would wait till the very last day it was in town before I asked the fat dark lady, who was the director's wife, if I might go. Of course I knew her now.
And I must say good-bye to Father and Mother and my brothers and sister, or I couldn't bear it. I wouldn't stay away forever, no, far from it, only a little while, until I was a perfectly splendid performer.
All at once it occurred to me that I ought to practise a little on horseback before I offered myself to the circus troupe. I ought at least to know what it was like to sit on a horse.
There certainly couldn't be any better opportunity than there was now, when our whole barn was full of horses. But I must take Karsten into my confidence; he would have to help me to climb through a hole in the back of the barn, for the grooms always fastened the barn door when they went away. At noon there was never any one up there, so I planned to crawl in then and practice getting on and off of a horse. Yes, I would stand up on him too,—on one leg—stretch out my arms, and throw kisses as they do at the circus.
"Karsten," said I the next day, "what should you say if I became a circus-rider?"