“Splendid!” breathed the boy, removing the fish horn from his lips for a brief instant, then blowing with all his might again.
As the wagons moved along he saw many people whom he knew. As a matter of fact, Phil knew everyone in the village, but there were hundreds of people who had driven in from the farms whom he did not know. Nor did anyone appear to recognize him.
“If they only knew, wouldn’t they be surprised?” chuckled the lad. “Hello, there’s Mrs. Cahill.”
The widow was standing on her front door step with a dishtowel in one hand.
In the excess of his excitement, Phil stood up, waving his horn and yelling.
She heard him—as everybody else within a radius of a quarter of a mile might have—and she recognized the voice. Mrs. Cahill brandished the dishtowel excitedly.
“He’s a fine boy,” she glowed. “And he’s having the first good time he’s had in five years.”
The Widow Cahill was right. For the first time in all these years, since the death of his parents, Phil Forrest was carefree and perfectly happy.
The clowns on the wagon with him were uproariously funny. When the wagon stopped now and then, one whom Phil recognized as the head clown, Mr. Miaco, would spring to the edge of the rack and make a stump speech in pantomime, accompanied by all the gestures included in the pouring and drinking of a glass of water. So humorous were the clown’s antics that the spectators screamed with laughter.
Suddenly the lad espied that which caused his own laughter to die away, and for the moment he forgot to toot the fish horn. The parade was passing his former home, and there, standing hunched forward, leaning on his stick and glaring at the procession from beneath bushy eyebrows, stood Phil’s uncle, Abner Adams.