“Oh, I don’t know.”
“I do. There’s the doghouse over there. See it?”
“Yes, thank you.”
The attendant leaving him, Phil walked on alone to Mr. Sparling’s private office, for such was the use to which he put the little tent that the usher had called the “doghouse.”
“I wonder what he can want of me?” mused Phil. “Probably he wants to thank me for stopping that pony. I hope he doesn’t. I don’t like to be thanked. And it wasn’t much of anything that I did anyway. Maybe he’s going to—but what’s the use of guessing?”
The lad stepped up to the tent, the flaps of which were closed. He stretched out his hand to knock, then grinned sheepishly.
“I forgot you couldn’t knock at a tent door. I wonder how visitors announce themselves, anyway.”
His toe, at that moment, chanced to touch the tent pole and that gave him an idea. Phil tapped against the pole with his foot.
“Come in!” bellowed the voice of the owner of the show.
Phil entered, hat in hand. At the moment the owner was busily engaged with a pile of bills for merchandise recently purchased at the local stores, and he neither looked up nor spoke.