“A good-by to you, Diggeldy Dan,” the dragoon cried warmly, as the clown sprang to his seat. “And do come and visit us again some day.”
“Indeed, I shall try,” called Dan in return as the White-White Horse started off down the slope. And looking back he could see that Beader had mounted to the top of a cornstalk. There he stood, waving his plumed cap over his head, his red coat a bright spot in the moonlight.
Soon the hoofs of the White-White Horse began to play a soft tattoo on the turf and the Pretty Lady’s laugh to ring merrily in tune with it. But these sounds could not shut out another that Dan fancied still filled the air. It seemed to come from the fast receding valley, growing fainter and fainter and fainter, yet still saying, “Tick-took, tick-tock, tick-took.”
So we will leave Dan here—leave him as he is being carried back to the great menagerie tent where (you may be very sure) he told every wee bit of the tiniest part of his adventure to the animals who awaited his coming. “And, after that?” you no doubt are asking, “did he return to see Beader? Or ever again go adventuring with Gray Ears, the Elephant? And the Pretty Lady with the Blue-Blue Eyes; did she carry more of the animals into the wide wide world on the White-White Horse? And did Dan—”
CHAPTER XXVI
WE SAY GOODBYE TO DIGGELDY DAN
Stop! Stop! Thumb-bobs and tack hammers, what a collection of questions!
“But how is one to know when there are no more pages that tell?” you persist.
How, indeed! And yet there is a way. For one may always summon those two marvelous playfellows, Guess and Suppose, and with them seek out even Diggeldy Dan. And, having caught up with him, you’ll find the blue-eyed one, too; and (like as not) Lion, and Monkey, and Tiger, and Seal, and the rest of the whole merry crew. For none of them is ever a great ways away,—at least no farther than the circus is near.
“But,” you enquire, after considering this plan for a minute or more, “will they talk to me when once I do find them?”
Perhaps. And yet you must not be sad if they will not. Instead, you should recall what Gray Ears once said in speaking to Dan. “Unless I am away from the circus, I rarely talk to any one,” he warned. “Indeed you might spend months upon months with the Very Biggest Circus and yet never hear one of its animals utter so much as a word.”