Laughter and song, music and good-fellowship, dancing and innocent revelry, there were none of these at Beachfield Fair. For music there was the steam roundabout’s echoes of the sordid musical comedy of the year before the year before last—laughter there was not—nor revelry—only the dirty guardians of the machines for getting your pennies stood gloomily huddled, and a few groups of dejected girls and little boys shivered in the cold wind that had come up with the sunset. In that wind, too, danced the dust, the straw, the newspaper and the chocolate wrappers. The only dancing there was. The big tent that held the circus was at the top of the ground, and the people who were busy among the ropes and pegs and between the bright vans resting on their shafts seemed gayer and cleaner than the people who kept the little arrangements for people not to win prizes at. And now the circus at last was opened; the flap of the tent was pinned back, and a gypsy-looking woman, with oily black ringlets and eyes like bright black beads, came out at the side to take the money of those who wished to see the circus. People were now strolling toward it in twos and threes, and of these our four were the very first, and the gypsy woman took four warm sixpences from their four hands.
“Walk in, walk in, my little dears, and see the white elephant,” said a stout, black-mustached man in evening dress—greenish it was and shiny about the seams. He flourished a long whip as he spoke, and the children stopped, although they had paid their sixpences, to hear what they were to see when they did walk in. “The white elephant—tail, trunk, and tusks all complete, sixpence only. See the Back Try A or Camels, or Ships of the Arabs—heavy drinker when he gets the chance—total abstainer while crossing the desert. Walk up, walk up. See the Trained Wolves and Wolverines in their great National Dance with the flags of all countries. Walk up, walk up, walk up. See the Educated Seals and the Unique Lotus of the Heast in her famous bare-backed act, riding three horses at once, the wonder and envy of royalty. Walk up and see the very table Mermaid caught on your own coast only yesterday as ever was.”
“Thank you,” said Francis, “I think we will.” And the four went through the opened canvas into the pleasant yellow dusty twilight which was the inside of a squarish sort of tent, with an opening at the end, and through that opening you could see the sawdust-covered ring of the circus and benches all around it, and two men just finishing covering the front benches with red cotton strips.
“Where’s the Mermaid?” Mavis asked a little boy in tights and a spangled cap.
“In there,” he said, pointing to a little canvas door at the side of the squarish tent. “I don’t advise you to touch her, though. Spiteful, she is. Lashes out with her tail—splashed old Mother Lee all over water she did—an’ dangerous too: our Bill ’e got ’is bone set out in his wrist a-trying to hold on to her. An’ it’s thruppence extry to see her close.”
There are times, as we all know, when threepence extra is a baffling obstacle—a cruel barrier to desire, but this was not, fortunately, such a moment. The children had plenty of money, because Mother had given them two half-crowns between them to spend as they liked.
“Even then,” said Bernard, in allusion to the threepence extra, “we shall have two bob left.”
So Mavis, who was treasurer, paid over the extra threepences to a girl with hair as fair and lank as hemp, and a face as brown and round as a tea cake, who sat on a kitchen chair by the Mermaid door. Then one by one they went in through the narrow opening, and at last there they were alone in the little canvas room with a tank in it that held—well, there was a large label, evidently written in a hurry, for the letters were badly made and arranged quite crookedly, and this label declared:
REAL LIVE MERMAID.
SAID TO BE FABULUS, BUT NOW TRUE.
CAUGHT HERE.
PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.
DANGEROUS.
The little Spangled Boy had followed them in and pointed to the last word.