“What are you going to do—be a trapeze performer or what?”
“Well,” reflected the lad wisely, “maybe I shall be an ‘Or What.’ I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I should like to be the fellow who cracks the whip with the long lash and makes the clowns hop around on one foot—”
“You mean the ringmaster?”
“I guess that’s the fellow. He makes ’em all get around lively. Then, sometimes, I think I would rather be a clown. I can skin a cat on the flying rings to beat the band, now. What would you rather be, Phil?”
“Me? Oh, something up in the air—high up near the peak of the tent—something thrilling that would make the people sit up on the board seats and gasp, when, all dressed in pink and spangles, I’d go flying through the air—”
“Just like a bird?” questioned Teddy, with a rising inflection in his voice.
“Yes. That’s what I’d like most to do, Teddy,” concluded the lad, his face flushed with the thought of the triumphs that might be his.
Teddy Tucker uttered a soft, long-drawn whistle.
“My, you’ve got it bad, haven’t you? Never thought you were that set on the circus. Wouldn’t it be fine, now, if we both could get with a show?”
“Great!” agreed Phil, with an emphatic nod. “Sometimes I think my uncle would be glad to have me go away—that he wouldn’t care whether I joined a circus, or what became of me.”